The Witch and the Warlock
by Sena Johannsen
Summary: A story of a college student infected with the maddening disease destroying the country, but lucky enough to retain one vital aspect of humanity. No longer being updated, but most likely rewritten some time in the indeterminate future.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

We all knew of the terrible pandemic that had struck Fairfield, Pennsylvania. We didn't think however, that it would spread as quickly as it had. Yet here I am, not even two days after the initial news reports, cornered in a bathroom stall on the third floor of the Student Activity Center at the University of Louisville, two infected students beating me senseless until I fall unconscious from the pain.

I wake up in a stupor. I'm not sure of where I am, or what happened. My vision is blurry, and I feel sick. The world around me is a hurricane, dark formless colors and blurs moving in an uncoordinated dance. I try to stand and immediately I throw up. Only half of it makes it into the toilet next to me. The rest decorates my shoes. I lean against the wall and my bangs fall in front of my face, sticking to the drips of vomit on my lips. I reflexively move them out of my face. Though my vision is still blurred and muddy, I pull myself to my feet. Twice I almost slip on the odorous goop on the floor I just heaved a moment ago, but I maintain my stance. The world is beginning to situate itself into forms, and the darkness is cleared up just a bit. My arm, outstretched and feeling my way around me, has become a gray blob that is slowly separating from the red walls around it. I wobble out of the stall, and a bright fluorescent light overhead greets me. I squint for a moment and put my hand in front of my eyes to shield me from its glare.

Then, I notice something. My hand doesn't look right. It's hard to tell, but the color definitely looks off. At that moment my focus finally comes back to how it should be, and I see the shocking truth: my skin is nearly devoid of color. I let out a small shriek, and fall back to the wall. I pull back the sleeve of my torn jacket to reveal that my arm is the same gray, almost chalk-white color.

"What… what is this!?" I shout. A thought from my subconscious answers. _This is the infection, remember? It spread here!_ The bathroom mirrors are all broken, but one is merely cracked. I run to it and gasp upon seeing my face. I still resemble myself, but my skin has become the same gray infected hue. The most terrible change however is in my eyes. I don't even know if they exist any longer; all I can see is a small, but bright, glowing light in each of my sockets that gives me the appearance of some sort of demonic creature.

"I'm infected?" I stutter. "I'm fucking infected!?" I can't tear my gaze away from my reflection in the cracked mirror, like it's a train wreck, horrible yet fascinating. "How can I be infected?" I ask the grotesque image. "I… I remember being attacked, and then running… but, if I'm infected…" I'm hesitant to finish the sentence, for the fear it'll bring with it, "… then… why can I still think? Doesn't the disease make people go mad?" Terror fills my thoughts. Perhaps the infection hasn't reached that point yet. "No no no no!" I exclaim., finally tearing myself from the mirror and proceeding to pace back and forth in thought. "Those people who attacked me, who… who infected me," the word 'infected' was hard for me to say out loud, "they changed in both body and mind in no time, didn't they? Right? It must be! How long was I unconscious for anyway?" I continue talking to myself to keep my spirits up. I don't look back in the mirror, or at least try not to. In little time I realize I can't stay in this bathroom forever. I have to leave. I assume if I'm infected, the others shouldn't attack me. After all, the two that cornered me left apparently.

I peek my head out of the door with extreme caution. I can't see much of the activity center, but I don't see anyone. I open the door just a crack more. Morning sunlight pours in and I squint for a moment. It was around noon when I was attacked, I remember. "Just how long was I out for?" I repeat. "A day? Two days?" I curse myself for not bringing my watch to class that day. I open the door entirely and step out, making sure it makes no noise as it closes. The air is deathly quiet, an eerie contrast to the usual noise and clamor that always filled the activity center. I awkwardly make my way towards the middle of the hallway like an actor in an embarrassing costume about to face the audience. Then, I spot them. A group of infected people are gathered further down the hallway, not far from the escalators. They are all standing emotionless, as if in a trance, like mannequins on display. I can't tell if they are students or faculty, they all look the same: gray, twisted forms of their old selves, with glowing eyes and ripped clothing, just like me. Unlike me however, a couple of them have dried splatters of blood on their clothes, and also unlike me, none of them seem to be thinking much.

I freeze. Have they seen me? Two of them are turned to face me, so they must have. They aren't acting on my arrival though. Or, at least I don't think they are. I count seven altogether, all of them just dawdling about, holding their heads, scratching themselves or doing other strange motions. One is leaning up against the window overlooking the nearby railroad tracks and staring blankly out at a flickering lamppost. The power is still working for whatever reason, I realize. I wonder how long that will last.

I glance behind me. There's nothing but a stone wall and a couple of offices. Curiosity is a dangerous thing. I can't help but want to get closer – to observe the group of infected. Even though every bit of rational thought in me is telling me to turn around and explore the offices to see if I can get out of the building that way, I keep walking forward, toward the infected. As I reach just a few yards from them, one of them, with his backpack still on, groans. I immediately stop and come to my senses. I can't move though; I'm petrified by fear. The backpacked infected caught the attention of the others, and they all take a moment to turn towards me.

Oh god oh god oh god what do I do? They aren't attacking me. Are they going to? Can they tell I still have my senses? No no, I'm already infected, just like you all. Yeeees, that's it. No need to bother with me… right?

That must have been the correct assumption, as they all simultaneously lost interest in me and returned to doing nothing. I felt my muscles relax, and my breathing return to normal as a wave of relief washed over me. My heart was no longer thumping in my chest either. Yes, I think, I still have a beating heart. This disease will not claim me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

I pass a dozen more infected on my way to the exit by the parking garage. They all give me nothing more than a passing glance before slumping back into a melancholy state of inactivity. It depresses me. Is this what the Earth is going to turn into – a world of lifeless beings like this? I doubt anywhere is going to escape this plague. Well, maybe an island like Madagascar or something. There must be more like me out there somewhere, I hope.

I step outside into the morning air and behold a gruesome sight that brings me to my knees. Bursting forth from the parking garage's exit is a heap of vehicles, corpses and infected, all mangled together in some horrific frozen glacier. I feel like I'm about to vomit again, but I don't think there's anything left in me _to _vomit. I want to say something to the effect of the horror of the sight in front of me, but there are still live infected wandering the area, and actually a good number of them, and I fear that, should they hear me speak, they will stop being so indifferent towards me.

I walk over to a nearby bench and sit down on it to think. Where shall I go? How shall I get there? My car is in that mess; I won't be able to get it out. Where should I go? I repeat myself. This is nuts, is this the fucking apocalypse? What do I do? I stew the questions in my head for a while, letting them direct me as they please. Eventually I stand up and begin walking towards the nearby interstate. I'll make my way towards my mother's house in the suburbs of East End, and possibly decide how to proceed on the way there.

The sky above me is dominated by giant marshmallow clouds. The sun hides its presence, letting only sliver-shaped rays shine through. It's ironic, considering the hellish scene on the ground the sunlight illuminates. Everywhere you look is death. Bodies, once fleeing in terror, now lay still in pools of their own blood, dried stains on the pavement. Infected wander aimlessly about them. Every intersection is a car wreck. Even nature, the green of the grass and the trees, is being drowned in a sea of red and gray. I feel like a wanderer lost in a complicated desert which is both familiar and foreign, trudging through the perverted cityscape I know and yet do not know. I don't know what I am searching for, only that I am searching for something. It will be comforting, and I will know it when I see it. The colorless creatures that I glide past are ghosts, remnants of the old world transfigured to fit this one. They do not know what they are, or why they are still here. Am I one of them too, then?

The body of a man is impaled on a bus stop sign that had been uprooted somehow and tossed a distance. I recognize him; I had been in one or two classes with him a few semesters ago. I can't remember his name. I keep walking down the silent carnage of Eastern Parkway, towards the part of the city known as the Highlands. It would be a short drive, but by foot it will take me about an hour or two. Even though there are no signs of movement aside from the random bobble of mindless infected, it still feels awkward walking along the street. Damn habits are hard to break. I walk in the grassy median of the parkway. The grass is wet with moisture from the air, and with remnants of the morning dew. My new skin doesn't seem to want to absorb the humidity as readily as it would before. I hide my hands in my jacket sleeves.

As I slowly make my way through the ruined city, I expect to see at least someone still alive, or uninfected, but it's become one colossal ghost town. I don't even hear gunshots or any noises of that sort in the distance; no signs that a resistance is still at large can be seen. I see the aftermath of conflicts, a corpse of a police officer with an unloaded pistol at her side, or broken planks of wood in the windows of houses once boarded up, but it is all in the past. Where is the military in all of this? I ponder the answer for a few minutes until throwing it aside.

I reach the awkwardly designed intersection at Eastern Parkway and Baxter Avenue. There's an animal clinic to my left that I never had noticed was there before. I wonder if the disease affects animals other than humans. No stray dog or cat had crossed paths with me yet. I think of my old dog, Diego, and I think how lucky he was to have passed quietly just a few months before this disaster. The thought of so many pets loose in the world, starving to death because they're domesticated and can't find food for themselves is just too sad. I never was one to be able to hold back my crying. I feel the unmistakable heaving feeling as though my lungs are stretching themselves into pain, that terrible feeling that heralds the tears, but my eyes remain dry. There is no release. I guess I can't cry anymore. My lungs stay on fire.

Only a couple blocks farther and I come upon the remains of what was one of the liveliest parts of town. This stretch of Bardstown Road is lined with all manner of stores and shops, mostly local. Parking lots are hidden behind the buildings, but that didn't stop the streets from becoming a junkyard mess of cars. A black Civic even managed to drive through the wall of the Qdoba restaurant on the corner and get stuck in it. I'm not going to think how it managed that. This area is especially crowded with infected. They seem slightly more alert than the ones I'd seen before. That coupled with their number put the fear of detection back into me. I doubt it will do anything, but I put a wobble in my step as I walk past the deformed, putrid ex-people, trying my best to mimic them.

The Highlands don't look so high anymore. I want to say that terrible pun aloud. I decide to scavenge the stores for things. It's not like there's anyone left for it to be considered stealing anymore. I'm ashamed to admit that my first thought was to pilfer CDs from the ear X-tacy down the street. Not only has the University been the only place I've come across still with electricity, but I've certainly more important things to horde.

Food, for example! Why haven't I thought of food since now? I'm not really hungry, though. That doesn't make any sense. Hasn't it been at least a day since I last ate? I take a short walk to the Kroger store. I should find some food, even if I'm not hungry. The entrance is blocked by a barricade of grocery carts. It takes some work to get past them. Inside is an almost comical sight. Several infected are in their work uniforms and at their cashiers, still. I grab a box of pizza Goldfish from what's left of the crackers and chips aisle and eat a handful. They taste terrible. I check the expiration date – not for another eight months. Great, I think, one of my favorite foods on the planet now tastes like garbage. I toss the bag to the ground, spilling tiny orange fish everywhere.

I spend the rest of the daylight pillaging. I grab a messenger bag from a tiny shop and fill it with supplies from various places – a pocket knife, a flashlight, about three dozen batteries, a bunch of hair ties, and a bag of mini Chips Ahoy cookies just in case my appetite returns, among other things.

When the sun falls, and the sky turns shades of orange and red to mimic the blood stained earth, it begins to rain. It's only a light drizzle, but the ominous raincloud quickly approaching makes me realize I should find some shelter for the night. Carmichael's Bookstore is just across the street, so I choose there to rest. Inside is one infected woman standing in the doorway that linked the bookstore and a Heine Brothers' Coffee together. She seems a bit confused by the front door opening yet nothing interesting accompanying it. In little time the rain begins to pour. After setting my bag down near a bookshelf miraculously not knocked over I peek outside at the storm. The infected outside don't seem to be affected by it in the least. I think to myself how weird that is.

I clear off an area of the small store to lie down for the night. It's been the worst, the strangest, and the most turmoil-filled day of my life, and I'll appreciate the sleep.

But I can't. I toss and turn for hours, until the sunlight has completely vanished from the sky and the only light left is from a battery-powered lamp hanging from the ceiling, casting strange shadows on the store. I'm not sleepy in the least. WHY? I want to shout in anger so badly. Eventually I resign myself to staying awake. I sit up, leaning against a bookcase full of new arrival novels, written by authors that are probably dead now, or worse. I wonder if I should write a book. There isn't much of an audience, but it might be an interesting read. Nah, I never was good at writing. I pull out from the bookshelf the first book I see. "The Gone-Away World", by Nick Harkaway. Sure, why not? The light is just enough for me to see the words on the page. I spend the rest of the night reading stories that will never again have the chance to exist in this world.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

The rain lets up a couple hours after daybreak. I stuff _The Complete Works of Shakespeare_ into my bag to read sometime in the future. Leaving the bookstore, I find the infected have moved. A group not present last night has drifted into the area. Two of them are punching the living daylights out of each other. The rest are just watching with as much of a confused look as they can muster, and I join them, but from a distance. My instincts precede my ability to think: I get the hell out of there as fast as an inconspicuous pace will take me.

I walk through Cherokee Park. Compared with the violent destruction of the city, the park is a bastion of life. I see no animals, but the plant life does not look as though the plague has done anything to it. The colors of a mid-September day still paint the landscape; liberal reds, oranges and yellows stand out vibrantly amongst the greenery of a fading summer. I'm in no hurry. Finding on a grassy hill vacant of any infected other than myself, I set my things to the side and lie down. I stare up at the clouds, amputated remnants of last night's storm. I want to forget. I want to wipe everything that has happened in the past two days from my mind and never remember, never rediscover the horrors. I know that won't happen, but I indulge myself in the daydream for a little while, closing my eyes and picturing better times on the back of my eyelids, until it loses its novelty, and I continue on my trek home.

Exiting the park, I hear an unfamiliar noise behind me. It is a low murmur, like the unintelligible ramble a loud crowd in the distance might make. Then, the sound of busy footsteps accompanies it. From the mangled, broken road I just came from comes a group of at least thirty infected, in a mad dash. I flinch for a moment in fear. They run past me, and my subconscious tells me _Follow them!_ I obey. I join them in their haste, under the ruins of the I-64 overpass and further down Grinstead Drive, towards the water treatment plant. I am unsure of what caused them to get so riled up until a minute passes and I hear the sound of a gunshot, echoing across the lifeless, broken condominiums that line the street. The noise seems to anger the infected mob I travel with, as they start yelling, screeching, and grunting all sorts of strange, animalistic noises.

It startles me as well, but for reasons different. A sign of life! I'm ecstatic at the very idea. My jog turns into a sprint. I'm filled with a burst of energy just thinking of finding another mind in the world possibly unaffected. Another two gunshots scream through the air. The infected babble at it. They must have been aware of this person long before I heard the gunshot.

The mob slows to a stop. I keep on running, ignoring their behavior. Three blocks further, I discover the reasons behind it. The pummeled body of an African-American man lies still in a slowly growing pool of blood, a pistol still gripped tightly in one hand. Without thinking, I exclaim a weak "No!" and fall to my knees. I have seen so many corpses already, but this one just… hurts so much more. He is dead, but the signs of life have not completely left him. He looks more like a picture, a frame in a movie, as though someone needed to unpause so he could finish his tumble, cough a bit, then stand back up and be just fine. His eyes are still wide open, looking somewhere. His skin is still flush with color and the muscles under them still ready to work.

I could have saved him. If I were just a bit faster, I might have been able to save him. I want to break into tears again, but my body won't let me. Why do I care so much? I curse under my breath. Is it because of the man, or is it because of what he means? The infected don't seem to care. They don't seem to care about anything, as long as we're all dead. They don't even care about the slain infected the man killed, before they caught him and beat him to death. They just return to doing nothing. They stand victorious, yet without any pride, over their slain foe. I want to kill them. I want to stand up, draw out my knife and kill them with such ferocity that it threatens to overtake my body, but I do not. I cannot. It is not my wiser self that stops me, but my cowardice. I've no chance against them. I would simply join the dead man in front of me as another stain on the pavement. I don't want to be so frightened but I am. I can't help it, and that just makes me angrier, now at myself even more so than at the murderers around me. The absent tears grow stronger in my chest, and my breathing becomes as heavy as a fog.

The viscous puddle of blood runs down the pavement, and makes contact with my knees. Its lukewarm touch brings me back to reality. "Shit!" I curse under my breath again, covering my mouth midway through the word. I realized I had spoken thrice now with infected around me. I think that's enough to prove my speech doesn't bother them, but that doesn't stop me from being extremely unwilling to say something else to prove it. I grab my messenger bag and flee the scene.

It's been at least an hour since I left the dead man to his grave in the middle of the road. I've long since regained my emotions, but the pains in my chest never vanished. I walk down the forested US highway 42, the road that will eventually lead me to the subdivision where my mother's house is, with one hand clutching the fabrics of my shirt in pain. I wince if I try to take a deep breath. This is nuts. Why does this hurt so much? I'm talking to myself. Will it ever stop? I hate this. I hate this pain. I hate my twisted body. I want to find something not to detest, but everywhere I look is ugliness, and that ugliness transforms into hatred, which then becomes an overpowering sorrow, and the pain in my chest only gets worse.

Chenoweth Elementary is on the way home. I jog past it, my eyes averted away. The last thing I want to see is a bunch of dead and infected kids. As I'm running, an infected in a hooded sweatshirt begins running alongside me. He is an adult man of normal size. His hood is pulled far over his face, revealing only a gross smile of crooked teeth with a jungle of unruly stubble surrounding it. I glance at him and he returns it. I'm probably just as ugly as he is. Is this one sentient too? I want to say something to him, but my throat won't let the words escape. I stop running, and he mimics me. My eyes are darting everywhere. He stares at me for a moment, then runs away. I try to yell at him "Wait!" but it only comes out as an asphyxiated word, little more than a breath. Why didn't I say anything?

My old high school comes into view. My sister is in there somewhere. Only a little longer now until I reach my destination. It cannot come any sooner. I feel like shit. The aching has spread from my chest to every portion of my body. Please don't let this be the last part of the infection, the part I've somehow avoided. Please don't let this take my mind, too. That would be too cruel, to leave such a dismal end. This is too much.

By the time I'm in the subdivision and onto my street, I'm barely walking anymore. I drag my bag behind me, scraping the pavement. I strain to keep my eyes open; my vision becomes blurred. I pray this is just me finally managing to get some sleep. I don't care at this point. I'll happily crash on the wet street. But I'm so close! Just a few more houses and I've made it. I pull every ounce of strength I have to drag myself the last small leg of the journey, to ignore the searing, blinding, overwhelming pain.

I reach the front porch. I can barely see, but I know them by heart. But I cannot feel. I collapse to the ground and my hands brush the concrete steps, but I cannot distinguish their touch from anything else around me. All of it is pain. I give up. I close my eyes, and surrender myself as the darkness devours my mind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

I see light.

It's just a glimmer, hazy and far off, like I am at the bottom of the ocean's abyss, looking up at the faintest traces of sunlight far above. How long was I in darkness before this?

Am I alive? Am I dead? There are no senses but that tiny, distant light.

I want it. I don't know what it is. I don't know where I am. I don't even know if I still have a mind, but I know that I desire that light. No… not just that – I need it. I must be alive, or at least conscious. I can see the tiniest bit of hope before me.

I make a thought to reach towards it, but I feel nothing, no outstretched hand before me splitting the shadow between the light and I. Have I lost my body? Am I nothing more than a consciousness, or perhaps a soul, lost and wandering, without a vessel? Or is this… this light… is this the one sign left that I still exist, somewhere? I think to turn my gaze in different directions, but what I see does not change.

The abyssal ocean threatens to swallow me again. It sends its gloom into my mind, permeating my thoughts with despair and hopelessness. I fight it. I have to. I refuse to be lost in this endless darkness, possibly for eternity. What can I do to stop it though? I try to grasp the quiet light in the darkness, but am rewarded with the same fruitless result. That does not stop me. I try and try again. I will have it.

Wait.

Did it just… grow?

Is the light a bit brighter than it was a second ago?

Yes! Yes, it is! I reach for it again. I don't care if I can't feel or hear anything, I can see it! I can see the light, growing larger by just the smallest increments possible… but it is growing!

The suffocating shadow's grip is loosening. The light is larger, and color has emerged within it. It is a faint reddish hue, like the last embers of a fire that need only be gently cared for in order to return to life. For just a moment I stop my frenetic chase-in-thoughts towards the light. Am I there? Am I free? No, not yet.

Then, movement begins. It is barely noticeable – blurs of slightly different shades of red slowly interacting with each other like tired amoebas. I think to run after the red glow and the movement becomes more animated, quicker, as though it was responding to my thoughts. I think to wave my hand in front of it and the blurry blobs of light turn to swirls that mingle and mix with each other like a blend of dyes. I want to make out shapes but it's all madness.

But it's something. Though it is still a dull light, it has almost entirely overthrown the darkness that now is hiding in a defiant last stand in the corners of my vision. Even though I cannot feel any body to associate with these thoughts of movement, I still think to flail my arms around and run in a mad dash.

However, this time I hear something. It is extremely quiet, almost silent. An undulation of sound cries softly through the hazy redness, like the sound of whales or the eerie resonances that emanate from Saturn. Then, it evolves. It becomes more concrete, more discernable from the silence, though still muffled, like sounds from behind a thick glass window. What I hear coexists with what I see, dancing in strange discordant noises alongside the swirling movements of red light.

This is all so strange and otherworldly. I can remember the last thing that happened to me. I had just reached my house when I collapsed and blacked out. Am I still there?

Then, I feel the sensation of touch. It is only a single neural spark, but I feel it with the intensity of a pin prick. That one touch is immediately followed by a dozen, then a hundred, then too many to count, and I am filled with the feeling of numbness leaving the body, thousands of pins and needles. It is simultaneously painful and joyous. It invigorates me with hope; there is no doubt left that I am not still alive. I can feel my body take its form in my mind; simple like a stick-figure at first, then slowly growing more and more complex. It feels both familiar and alien, just like the watercolor blurs and dissonant sounds.

My mind is racing. I need to calm down. I tell myself the danger is gone. I just need to wait, and relax. I can't rush this, right? I need to take things slowly. I must just be waking up from this sickness. It must have had me near death. Perhaps… perhaps I'm even cured? I don't even see how that would be possible, but that doesn't stop me from thinking about it. It certainly doesn't stop me from wishing it to be true.

That's… not the case however. I'm not sure how I know it, but I do. I'm not cured of the infection.

In fact…

I think… I think …

…something more happened.

I can't seem to put my mind on why I think that. Something… just doesn't feel as it should be. There is something terribly foreign in these senses, basic and befuddled as they are, that gives me this unrelenting feeling of estrangement from myself. I can make out almost entirely the feeling of my body, down to my hands and feet, but some of it just feels off. Perhaps it's the lack of an environment to ground myself against, but I feel an awkward loss of balance. Though I cannot see them, my arms feel heavy, like I have weights attached to my wrists. And while I'm at it, why do I only see the color red? I can make out objects, fuzzy squares and circles, but they are all different hues of red. Why is everything becoming clearer, save color?

Is that… is that a bookcase in front of me? Y-yes, I think it is. I try to reach out for it. I see a blur move in front of me and make contact with it. Is that my arm? I feel my fingers make contact with the books I can just barely distinguish from one another. Sound has fully formed into what it should be. I hear a few books fall, and feel one brush my leg.

I think I know where I am. I think this is the bookcase in the hallway. How did I get from outside the house to here? No matter. There should be a battery-powered lamp in my room to the left here. My eyesight is still a terrible muddy red mess, so I navigate my way along the wall by touch, but it feels different, like I'm scratching when I should be rubbing. The distance also seems different. The hallway seems narrower than I know it to be. Stumbling to get onto my knees, I am able to reach the shelf where the lamp resides. I can't seem to get my fingers around it like I would – like I'm trying to turn it on with chopsticks.

There! That's the switch! I turn it on.

Light!

Blinding light! It's too much! Horrible, white, bright light floods my eyes, scorching them with its intensity. It hurts… my god it hurts! Get it away!

With one hand shielding my eyes, I swat at the lamp with the other and it shatters upon impact. The pain, the fear… it's gone. I try to calm down. My heart is beating madly in my chest, and my breathing is hurried.

"What the fuck was that?!" I shout. I'm too distraught to notice my voice has changed. I blink my eyes several times, and my vision finally comes to focus.

I am in the doorway between the hallway and my mother's room. The pieces of the lamp are scattered across the floor. Everything is colored red, like I'm looking at it through a tinted glass. My hand is still in front of my face; it's –

…

Oh god… what… what is this?

This is not my hand this… this… WHAT IS THIS?

It's still a hand… I think. The skin is still infected gray, but the fingers – they are long, far too long, almost a foot long, bony and smooth, with dreadfully sharp, pointed ends. My mind won't register that they belong to me, but… they do.

"No!" I yell, and tear them away from in front of me. My right hand grazes a wall. My fingers sliced through it like a hot knife through butter. Why is this happening to me, I… what is happening? I fall back to the carpet, shaking and distraught. Mirror… I need… I need to move I need to see! What is this what happened?! I frantically crawl to the bathroom and pull myself up to the porcelain sink counter with my elbows. There is no light in the room, but I can see my reflection perfectly. I am still horribly infected, but my appearance has changed. The reflection of a girl younger than I looks back. Her hair is no longer curly and wild, but straight and lifeless. I slowly come to a stand. My balance is changed a bit. I am slightly shorter. I put a hand to my cheek to feel it, like I'm making sure I'm not seeing a strange illusion in the mirror, but I am not used to these long fingers, and I make a small pierce in the skin with the pointed tip of a finger.

I pull the hand back automatically. A small drop of blood seeps out of the wound. Carefully keeping my fingers away, I wipe the blood away with the back of my hand. My cheek stings.

"What on Earth is happening to me?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

I still can't sleep.

I really want to, too. I want to be able to fall asleep and believe this is all just a dream. Even if it's not, and I wake up to the same scene, the thought of wishing it as I drift off to sleep would make the ability to sleep itself so worth it. I suppose not being able to is the disease's metaphorical way of telling me that this is real. _To wake up from something you have to fall asleep first._ Yeah, real cute.

I decided to take a shower. I didn't care if it only lasted for five minutes. I didn't care if it was cold. I didn't care if the water was filled with disease (can't be worse than what I've already got, I tell myself). When I pulled the faucet, water came out, and more than I ever had before in my entire life, I wanted a goddamn shower. I didn't even bother taking my clothes off. Too much trouble. They were dirty, anyway.

I step into the gentle cascade. I can't tell if it's hot or cold. Have I lost a sense of temperature? I don't really care right now. It still feels fantastic to close my eyes and let the water crash against my face and run down the rest of my body. My clothes immediately become soaked, but my infected skin absorbs very little, instead letting the water stream down my arms and fly off of my strange, sharp fingers. I remember when I was younger I'd let it do the same thing, and pretend I was shooting water out of my fingers, like I was an X-man with mutant water powers, or Squirtle. That memory skips through my head for a moment and I have one quick laugh about it before ejecting a melancholy sigh that is quickly drowned out by the noise of the shower.

The water stops. I didn't turn it off. I don't know how long I stood there under it – maybe about fifteen minutes or so. It was long enough for me to recollect myself. Opening my eyes and looking at the thing my body has become was no longer startling and horrifying, just… unsettling. When I awoke in the activity center restroom, I was shocked of course, but I still resembled myself. This time however, I can't even find anything left that resembles the me of the old world. For starters, I'm twenty-one years old, and in the past I definitely looked my age. Now, I looked the same age as my sister, fifteen or sixteen; and I can't help but find it odd that _that_ of all things is disturbing me the most. Shouldn't the freakishly long knife-like fingers be at the top of the list?

I lie down in the middle of the living room, stretching my limbs out on the floor. The carpet begins to sop up the water from my soaking wet clothes. I let it, until the wetness starts to make my skin itch. I almost move to scratch it, before realizing what a bad mistake that would be on my part. To hell with it, I say, and rip my clothes off, throwing the remains to an empty corner, before lying down again. I stay there on the floor, naked, for an hour or so, just thinking. My mind jumps from topic to topic, too many for me to detail all of them. Random thoughts floating around, sometimes colliding with another, shaping each other, creating new thoughts that then do the same. It all goes nowhere for a while. I don't want to move. I don't want to think. I just want to lie here.

But one thought forces me up. I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier. My mother! Why isn't she here? She had taken the week off that the infection struck Louisville. I stand up, and make my way to the front door. The furniture and walls along the way are either broken or bear vicious slash marks across them. The front door itself is wide open, with its screen door torn to ribbons. That explains how I made my way as far as I did inside the house. Unable to sense anything, I must have torn my way through. Wish I could've seen that.

My mother's car isn't in the driveway, or parked in the street, or anywhere to be seen. She's gone, then. I doubt I'll ever see her again. I groan and slump down to the ground, leaning against the brick wall outside. I look up at the sky. Morning rays of light have been creeping around in the sky for a little while now. The world looks a little less reddish. That's odd.

It's almost sunrise, so I decide to sit outside and wait for it to come. My street is rather devoid of infected, when compared with the rest of the city. I can only spy two, both far off in the distance. Everyone must have been at work or school when it hit. Well, I was, at least. I wonder if my brother managed to escape somehow. He lives in Milwaukee; I don't talk with him much.

The sun crosses the horizon. I can't see it, hiding behind the houses across the street, but the sky is lit up in color, as is my vision. The redness is almost entirely gone, and things are the color they should be. That's a relief. My messenger bag has been lying out in the grass. I pick it up. It's wet with dew. I hope that book didn't get ruined; I still needed to read it. Picking it up, I realize I'm outside in my front lawn, completely naked. Despite that it is highly unlikely there is anyone within a mile's radius left to care, the realization still sends a shiver of weirdness through my spine and I find myself feeling very uncomfortable. I waste no time getting back indoors and closing the doors behind me.

None of my clothes fit me comfortably anymore. Fantastic. Mind you, I discovered this after spending 15 minutes trying to clothe myself with these stupid hands. I find it hard to do just about anything with them. I never really appreciated the craftsmanship of human hands until I get them traded for steak knives. Granted, my fingers still have their joints in them, but it doesn't help _that_ much; it still takes me almost a minute just to turn a doorknob. I even destroyed two t-shirts trying to get them on, before realizing they were going to be too big for me in the first place. The strangest part though, is that, despite each finger being extremely sharp past the furthest knuckle, I can still feel the ends whenever they touch (or I suppose more accurately, rip through) something. It feels as if the bone itself, with all its sensitive nerve endings, is protruding out and scraping, slashing everything it comes into contact with.

I drift into my sister's room and swipe some of her clothes. A bra is sacrificed in the process of getting dressed. The clothes still don't fit perfectly, but hell if I care. At least I'm not tripping over my own pant legs.

After getting dressed, I ponder for a moment. What do I do now? It's a very reasonable question to ask myself. I completed what I originally set out to do, that is – get home. Sure, something weird happened along the way, but I'm still here. What do I do? Do I just… wait here, live here, in solitude? Until when? Until someone happens to show up? Will that happen? I could be here for the rest of my life.

Well… well, no! I can leave, if I want to! I mean… I'm not in any real danger, am I? I would think the infected still will not attack me. I suppose… I suppose the people I'd have to worry about are any survivors, like that... like that man I found by the water treatment plant. I still feel somewhat responsible for his death, even though in reality there was little I could have done about it. Even if could have fought back the infected that were attacking him, to him I would have just been another one of his assailants. I probably would have been shot. I imagine I look even more frightening now that I did then.

I should find a gun. The thought pops into my head, and it makes perfect sense. I need protection. A little pocketknife was cute, but it really was a futile effort now that I think back on it. I need something I can seriously protect myself with.

Though I'm certain I could find a gun if I took a fine-toothed comb to all the houses nearby and searched for one, that seems like wasted effort on my part when I could simply make the trek a mile or two to the sporting goods store or the Wal-Mart and nab whatever I want from there. They'd have a stockpile to choose from, anyway.

I decide to hold it off until tomorrow, however. I haven't even been home a day, and I'd rather stay here while I can, where things are much less horrific than the rest of the city, and I can get some well deserved calm.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

So apparently, I can like… see in the dark, or something.

Just a few hours ago, I had climbed onto my roof to get a better view of the sunset. As the sky grew darker and darker, my vision returned to the red tint it had been the previous night. It didn't take long for me to realize this wasn't the strangest possible case of pink eye, but a kind of night vision, as I finally put two and two together to realize none of the buildings in sight have power, yet I've been able to see just fine when it should be pitch-black outside.

So, I've decided I'm going to make my excursion tonight, instead of tomorrow, as anything that might be after me will have less of a chance of spotting me, while I myself won't have a problem seeing them. That's _my_ reasoning, at least.

I rummage through my dresser for a black hooded sweatshirt and put it on, carefully. It doesn't fit, but that's what I hoped for – the hood easily falls in front my face. Damned glowy eyes would give me away.

I empty out the satchel I swiped the other day. The flashlight's useless. I toss it aside. The batteries might come in handy, so I keep those. I'll definitely need the knife; that's staying. The hair ties are rather worthless to me now. I spy the Chips Ahoy cookies. You know, it's really bothered me that I'm still not hungry. There is something definitely messed up, there. I decide to try my luck at eating again, and rip the top off the package with my thumb. I stab a cookie and eat it. It's not… what I remember them tasting like… that is cheap, starchy, mass produced chocolate chip cookies, but instead… just the starchy part. Oh well, they don't make me gag, so I eat the rest, too. I throw everything in an old backpack, along with some gauze and tape from the medicine cabinet and a towel. I found my watch I regretted not bringing with me the other day. It's working just fine; it's been one week exactly since the infection struck. Using my knuckles, I somehow managed to get it on my wrist, though loose and dangling about. Whatever.

It's so eerie, this vision of mine. My mind knows its darkness I'm looking through, but it's not seeing it, and that's freaking me out. It's also messing with my sense of time. I haven't slept properly in a week, and I haven't seen the night's darkness in over a day. If I didn't have this watch to remind me, I fear I might forget about time entirely.

I can't help but feel I'm doing something really stupid. I mean, I'm here, right? I'm safe… supposedly… right? Why am I going out there again? By the time I've asked all these questions however, I'm already out the door and on my way. I approach the first infected with great caution. I'm not sure if she'll attack or not, but I have my knife at the ready. If she comes after me, well… I'm afraid… but I'll kill her. I won't hesitate.

But she doesn't. Thank god, I say out loud. At my voice she turns her head, but sees nothing interesting in me. "Dumbass." I tell her, and keep moving on. Once I leave the subdivision, I am reminded of how grisly the world has become. I walk mostly through the lawns and grassy patches alongside the roads, as the roads themselves are cluttered with vehicles, doors still open with either corpses or infected dangling out. But it doesn't affect me as much as it did before. My god, am I being desensitized to all this? I don't know if I want that or not. Being able to shrug off the fear should something happen is a helpful thing to be able to do, but… I don't want to ignore the horror of this disaster. I feel it's disrespectful.

But, only about a third of the way there, I'm already bored. I never truly appreciated the conveniences of modern transportation, until I'm forced to walk miles, without an iPod at that. Even though I just did just that the other day, and for a longer distance, danger seemed to be closer then. Really, in actuality just as close now as it was then. I shouldn't downplay the danger I'm in right now. I could have ended up like that… like that man. Dead in barely a thought. Damn it, why can't I get him out of my mind?

To calm myself, I start quietly singing the first thing to come to my mind. By the time I reach the chorus I realize I'm singing Erasure in the middle of the Westport Village shopping center. I'm embarrassed as hell, but I don't stop. It feels totally exhilarating. I swear if anyone with a brain left is hearing me, though…

By the time I reach the Dick's Sporting Goods attached to the side of Oxmoor Mall I've gone through an entire CAKE album and three songs by Imogen Heap. I should shut up now. This place is absolutely packed with infected. Can't be too cautious, I tell myself. The large glass door to the store was shattered, now lying in pieces on the sidewalk. I carefully make my way into the store, dodging infected. I still haven't touched one of them, and I'd rather not take my chances. They're all filthy anyway.

The hunting section of the store looks ransacked. Hah, I should have seen this coming. Some people yet to be infected must have come through here. God, I hope it did them good. The thought of people escaping this plague almost sounds too good to be true. I give them a belated "Good luck!" before looking through what they left. Sheesh, they'd have to have a damn army to take everything here. Just how much does one store need to stock?

My initial thought is to find something simple and small, a handgun. Upon picking up the first one I saw, I quickly dismissed that idea. My weird, huge hands can't hold it right. I move to the carbines. Picking up a Mini-14, I can tell it will be much more doable. I'd only fired a gun twice before in my life, but they were both similar enough to this that I knew how one was supposed to hold and fire it. I'm very aware of my lack of knowledge in firearms, so I don't waste my time comparing this gun with some others. I take a few minutes to find the appropriate ammunition, and grab another Mini, just in case something happens to the first one.

I should have known this was too simple a trip. As soon as I'm about to leave, I hear the sound of something. Or… I should say: _someone_, that was definitely the sound of someone still human. I am not alone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

It was a scream - a woman's scream, shrill and piercing. "Help!" it cried. It came from the direction of the mall proper. The sound of mad infected followed.

What do I do? Do I seek her out? _Yes. Yes, of course you do!_ my subconscious tells me. I swiftly make my way towards the mall proper, gun in trembling hands. Fear keeps a tight grip on me. Is she defenseless? Is she not? Will she attack me? How do I let her know I'm friendly? What will the infected think of that, if anything? I'm so frightened I can't think straight. Do I even want to go after her? I... I don't think I do... _You have to!_ _She's uninfected! _But that's what I'm afraid of most! My mind is split in two. My steps are hesitant, unsure.

A second voice rings out. "Alice! Over here! Hurry!" It is a man. "It's safe in here! Hurry! We can bar the doors!" _Nowhere is safe._ You aren't safe. Should I save them then? Should I try? I don't know! The infected have reached them. I can hear them fending them off. I keep walking, unsure. I'm shaking. I turn a corner, and there the two of them are, in the distance. A man and a woman, the man brandishing a fireman's axe, killing what infected he can with it, and the woman defenseless, trying her best to escape the horde. Behind them , just a short distance, is an emergency exit. Is that where they're trying to escape to? The mob of infected has nearly surrounded them. They... they aren't going to win, are they? They're... going to die here, aren't they? I think. _They don't have a chance. _The infected are beating and clawing at them relentlessly. _Put them out of their misery._ I lift my rifle, and point it down the long mall hallway with the mad mob at the other end. Can I do this? I can't, can I? I try to aim, but my awkward hands are shaking in fear so fiercely. I can't... I can't do this... "I can't do this!" I shout, and I tear out of the building.

Out in the night air, under the moon, I lose my will to continue running. I can still hear the sounds behind me, terrible gnashing and tearing of flesh, screams both human and not. Why... I couldn't do anything. Why did I even come here? Why bother if I can't even do anything?! I fall to my hands and knees on the gum-stained pavement and I can't help but weep.

I scream out at the world, but it's really directed at myself. "You fucking idiot!" I shout in between the tears. "What did you think this was? Some kind of adventure? Quit being so childish! This-" I quit. I can't say anymore. The words only turn into sobs. I bury my head in my palms and let it all out. I'm tired.

It isn't for another twenty minutes that I pull myself together. I need to go home. My mind is made up. I need to go home because that's the only place I can be. I can't be out here in this jungle of death, with its violence and cruelty and... and reality. Yes, I need to just... to just hide. I'll just hide away in my house and... and I don't know what else, but I think... I think that's enough. That's all I can do. That's the only thing I know how to do that's any use in this world I've been thrown in. And right now, it's all I want to do.

I pick up my belongings and begin the walk back home. I have a new sense of awareness with me this time, but at the same time, any eagerness has been dissipated. The remains of the city I grew up in no longer seem empty and lifeless, as it did on the way to the mall. Now, danger seems around every corner. I walk with the eyes of a frightened puppy, constantly cowering in the face of the world around it, afraid to act against it.

It's going to be daybreak soon. I should hurry, but I don't. I've lost the energy to hurry. I'm gone half of the distance between the mall and my house, and my sadness has undergone a slow transformation. I can feel it changing from sorrow into anger, dark blue to flaming red, uncaring apathy to blind hatred. I want it out; I don't want to feel this way, but I don't know how to get it out of me, other than slashing signposts I shuffle past with my hand and watching them topple over.

I pass by a Mr. Gatti's. Damn, I want some pizza now. I'm not hungry, but it would certainly calm my nerves down. It'd probably taste terrible though, and that thought only makes me angrier. I groan out loud. "I almost wish I had lost my mind with the plague. Things'd be so much simpler, then." I can't believe I'm saying this, I think and let out a melancholy noise half a sigh and half a laugh. I must truly be at my wit's end.

It is now morning. I see the world in the colors I should be again. I pull the hood of my sweat shirt back and shake my head, letting my hair fall out. I sigh, and sit down on the sidewalk, against the wall of a small clinic. My things are at my side. I decide to sit here for a little while. Fuck the danger. I almost hope it finds me, if it even exists for me.

I ask a question to the wind. I'd thought it numerous times since I woke up infected, but I never really gave it much thought, concerning myself instead with more pressing matters of the moment. But now, I can't help but wonder: "Why was I spared as I was?" I honestly don't know if keeping my mind was a good or a bad thing. "I didn't… I didn't ask for this. There's a responsibility that comes with it that's just… far too much for me to handle." What am I saying? I don't want to lose my sanity. I don't want to die, but I just… I can't quite put up with living either. I must be mad. I'm not normally a religious person. Hell, I can count the number of times I've been in a church, mosque or what have you on one hand. But I think I'd like to pray. I don't see what else I can do right now. My mind tells me it's a fool's option, but… well hey – I'm a really foolish person. The only problem is: I haven't a clue what to pray for.

The last leg of the walk is uneventful, as I knew it would be, though my paranoid side kept me constantly on edge just to torment me._ There's someone behind that house in the distance!_ Fuck off. I still creep through the bushes and trees though, instead of simply walking down the sidewalk or what part of the street isn't cluttered with dead cars, just because I fall for the falsities my brain keeps telling me. By the time I'm home I so wish I'd stop thinking things I don't want to think. My head is pounding, and my eyes hurt. I set my two rifles down on the sofa, carefully, toss my bag somewhere, and immediately make for my bed. I know I won't sleep, but lying down in it for hours, trying my best to think about as little as possible will do just fine.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Lying down in my bed, I pretend I'm sleeping. I invent dreams for me to dream. In one, I'm an adventurer exploring a world of fantasy, discovering strange, wonderful, terrible creatures and places. In my travels I find an ancient castle carved into the side of a snow-topped mountain. It is deserted, no sign of life in it for at least centuries, so I and the band of explorers that I set out with settle in it, and eventually turn it into a thriving community. In another dream I'm an astronaut of the future, making first contact with an alien species. They have traversed the galaxy for ages, and just now came across our solar system in our local star cluster, which they call "jʃɛɹʌs dʒʊð", or "the purple ribbon". They are friendly, and gift humanity with the secrets of faster-than-lightspeed travel, with which we use to escape to the rest of the galaxy, where a whole host of alien lifeforms have created a vast network of civilizations. In a last dream, it is simply an ordinary day; I'm back in school, as I was just a couple weeks ago. There isn't a thought of danger in my mind aside from looking both ways before I cross the street. I like that dream the most. I wonder to myself if I'll ever be able to continue my studies in Arabic, or how that discussion of Ursula K. Le Guin in Humanities class would have ended up. Humanity… yeah, there's something I miss.

I wouldn't have thought to get up out of bed, but a guideless string of thoughts led me to think of Hayao Miyazaki's _The Castle of Cagliostro_, and now I find myself incredibly annoyed that I can't remember the name of the villain. Count… something or other? I lift myself up and lurch to the living room, where my giant shelf of movies has sat for years. Pulling the VHS out extremely carefully so as not to damage it, I peer over the old cardboard case. Nowhere does it say the guy's name. I curse, and set the video back in its spot. I want to watch the movie. Cinema has been always been my largest hobby and pastime, and rewatching old movies, where I already knew everything that was going to happen, never failed to instill a sort of reliable calm in me. Miyazaki flicks especially are extra soothing to watch. Ah! - Why couldn't I have chosen a hobby that doesn't require electricity? A lover of books or comics would have been gifted a silence to read, if extremely eerie. I on the other hand, continually find myself perturbed by the quietness of it all. I think I miss the white noise of society.

I make my way to the basement. Without power it is dark down here, even in the middle of the afternoon, but that's not a problem for me. What is however, is that without power the groundwater will eventually seep its way into the basement and flood it. I'm amazed it hasn't already, to be honest. The carpet laid out along portions of the floor isn't damp. I suppose that brief storm the night I spent at Carmichael's wasn't enough. Eventually one will come along though that will be, so I spend the rest of the day moving things out of the basement that I deem should be saved. My mother held a large collection of old books from her younger years. I haven't given up hope that she might still be alive. I don't think I ever will. The only relatives who have died in my lifetime were grandparents whom I barely knew; the thought of someone as close to me as my mother, or the anyone in my immediate family, dying is still so alien an idea to me that my mind can't grasp it, despite already being forced to deal with so many things I thought paramount to my life being stolen away from me by this viral armageddon. I can say all I want, out loud or in my head: "They could be gone forever!", but I still refuse to believe it.

I spend a good deal of time sifting through the corner of the basement no one ever went to. Dozens of boxes holding an endless array of knick-knacks, photos, mementos, and who-knows-what litter the area, along with old, dusty, forgotten furniture that belongs to a time before I existed. I move select items from this ancient treasure trove upstairs, and set them in my mother's room, along with her books. There isn't much room to walk in there anymore. I walk back downstairs and begin to unplug the big HDTV and the game consoles hooked up to it. When it comes to video games, I don't play them often, but what I do play generally stays on Nintendo's side of the fence. There's a Wii and an N64 plugged up to the TV. A Super Nintendo is hiding in a cabinet. Even if all this stuff is useless to me now, I make sure they all are brought upstairs, because… well, who knows? I suppose it's the Generation X in me at work still, unable to let all this technology be destroyed for no reason. The upstairs is now rather messy. I fall into the sofa.

So…what do I do now? I ask myself. It's a strange feeling – to have nothing planned in the future, other than "Survive." I guess… I'll simply let myself wander around the house. Do whatever I feel like. I lie in the empty bathtub. I try and remember kung-fu lessons from eighth grade. I take any bad food in the fridge and throw it out the window. I power up my laptop one last time in order to move everything important off of it onto a flash drive. I try to eat again, to find only the sugary stuff has any flavor in it. I act out scenes from _Clue_. I practice using my hands without destroying things. I read Romeo and Juliet (up until Mercutio dies, because he was totally the best character). However, I don't take even one step outside of the house.

This goes on for three days. On the third, while I am laying down on top of the refrigerator, singing "Yakko's World", I am interrupted. Immediately following Bangladesh is the sound of a gunshot, far in the distance. The sound does not cease; it is automatic, and there are multiple weapons being shot. Startled, I fall off the fridge. I hit my hip on the way down. Rubbing it with my wrist, I rush to every window in the house, trying to spot where this noise is coming from. _It's outside! Just go outside and look!_ Wait… no no no that's a bad idea. Shouldn't go outside. What if they see me? They'll shoot me!

The firing stops for a minute or two, then resumes, louder. Shit! They are getting closer! This is not good… this is NOT good. It's coming from the side of the house the kitchen is at. I crouch low to the ground and sneak to the window. The firing stops, then continues again. It is extremely loud. I peek through the blinds at the house next to ours. In the windows of the brick house violent flashes of light glares, accompanying the gunfire. I tear away from the window in fright. _There they are! Get them! Go after them!_ No, no! What am I thinking? I can't! _You can! GO!_ I can't! I'll be killed! A family from Kuwait lived in that house. I never did remember their names. The babbles of dying infected directly following the gunshots must be them, being shot to pieces.

The shots cease.

They are coming here next.

My heart skips several beats. I panic, and run to my room. It's too late to try and flee. They'll see me, and they'll kill me, whoever they are. It's dark outside. Through my bedroom window, I can see a flashlight illuminating the outside. A shadow of a person passes by. I almost scream. Thank god I didn't, and that I kept the curtains closed, or I'd be dead. My mind scrambles, and I do the most logical thing I can think of at the time: I hide under my bed. I crawl to the end tucked into the corner of the room, completely oblivious to the mass of spider webs I plunged my face into. Normally I'd be scared stiff of spiders, but a much greater fear has me commanded.

I hear the front door open. _They are here!_

"Damn, this place is a mess." A pause. "Seems clean, though. Ironic."

A different voice. "Search it, still." _Attack them, before they attack you!_

Heavy footsteps. First over carpet, then the creaking of wood. They are in the hallway. I summon every energy in me to still my body. Doors open. _Hurry!_

"Helloooo?" The first voice says. "Hah! Why can't they all be this easy?

A third voice. "Looks like they was getting ready to move. Or evacuate. Or something."

They open the door to my bedroom. _Now! Now! Get up!_

"That explains why there's no one here." Two footsteps. Creak... Creak…"Hello… wait, what's this?"

He sees me. I stop breathing. Oh god oh god oh god I'm dead I'm so dead!

"What?"

"Infected under the bed here. Girl."

I can feel the warmth from the recently fired rifle dancing on my back. The metal is only inches away from my bare skin.

"If she's not moving trying to kill you, she's dead."

Yes, yes! I'm dead! Leave me be! This is too much!

"Don't see no blood, though. Weird. Oh, well. You're right."

I feel like I'm fainting…

_I see._


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

I wake up.

I was actually… asleep? Yes… yes, I definitely think that was an awakening. I feel tired, the kind of tired that comes upon waking up. I don't want to open my eyes; I want to continue lying here, but there are things I want to know. Where am I? How did I fall asleep? I open my eyes. I am still under the bed. I almost move myself out, but then I remember: there were people in my house, people with guns, people who would have killed me. Or, wait – did they? I am still alive, right? I faintly remember one spotting me. What happened after that? It's all a blur. I decide to wait a moment, and listen to see if the intruders are still here.

I come to the conclusion they are not. The house is as quiet as a thought. I'm not taking any chances, however. Silently, I slide out from under the bed. The sun is shining brightly through my window, illuminating all the airborne dust that for some reason always loved to gather in my room. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the light. The bedroom door is ajar. Upon noticing this, I immediately shrink to the wall and inch my way towards the door. When I reach it, I peek out into the rest of the house. It's empty. I breathe a massive sigh of relief. Who on Earth were those people? Just random people out killing infected? They were moving from house to house; perhaps they were military? Is that their answer to the infection problem? Mass extermination? Not sure I subscribe to that idea. Well regardless, I imagine they think I'm dead, so I should be safe… for the time being at least. I stretch my limbs out of their sleep-induced rust. It feels fantastic. I walk to the kitchen with a yawn. Then, I notice it. A feeling I had almost forgotten, though now is unmistakably recognizable, creeps into me.

I'm hungry. Not just a little hungry, either. I am really freaking hungry. My stomach is empty, and lets out a dissatisfied grumble. I managed to sleep, and now I'm hungry? What is this? I mean, this is a good thing, but… how? Why now? I open the pantry. A giant box of Frosted Flakes greets me. There's no milk, but hell if I care. I pour myself a bowl and devour it in no time. I can't use a spoon, but that doesn't bother me. It even tastes kind of good, though not as I remember it. Two bowls later, and I'm stuffed. My mind recognizes this as a familiar thing that had been lost: eating food to replenish strength. Having my energy come from an unknown source as if by magic, though perhaps physically convenient, was mentally nerve-racking.

That thought gets me thinking. At the time I took it for granted, not needing food or sleep to function. I told myself I had bigger problems to deal with, which was true. Now however… now, I have reason to let it really bug me. I suppose to first know why I've lost this ability, I'd need to know why I had it in the first place. I give up the hunt for knowledge there. I might as well make guesses as to the nature of the plague itself if I'm to figure that out. This disease has done more supernatural things to me that simply give me free energy for… how long as it been now?

I yawn again. It sounds weird. I guess I'm still not used to the change in my voice. I'm still not used to having red glowy eyes that provide nightvision, either. And I doubt I'll ever get used to having Freddy Krueger fingers. The walls of my house are filled with scratch marks from me either misjudging distance or just getting bored. It looks like the stereotypical insane asylum in a horror flick.

Wow, I need to get movies off my mind. I'm not going to be able to watch them anytime soon, if ever again. I sigh. I wish I could go for a walk. Not going outside, though. Fuck that. Especially not with people out there still alive and hunting infected. If that bowl of Frosted Flakes makes me have to go, I'll poo in a plastic bag and throw it out the goddamned window, I'm not going outside, and that's that.

And that's a gross thought I'd rather not think about if I can help it. I creep to the living room window. Carefully, I look out into the street. It's empty as a ghost town. Good. I fall into the sofa with a copy of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. There were older books I'd rather have read, but I'm too afraid I'll accidentally rip to shreds any book I try to pick up and read, so I stick with the newer, less fragile ones for now. I'd always meant to read this trilogy sometime; the books had been sitting on my sister's bookshelf for years. All I can remember about it is it pissed off a lot of Christians. Something about killing God. Didn't we already do that a while ago? Nietzsche? Whatever.

Six days later I finish the trilogy. That was not the ending I needed. Oh well. I've got bigger problems. Namely, the diminishing store of food in the pantry. Of course my mother had to have cleaned out the pantry for the first time since Clinton was in office just a couple months ago. I imagine there was still some stuff good to eat in what she threw away. Thankfully she always stocked up on bottled water. I used to always patronize her for it, saying it's a waste of money when Louisville has some of the tastiest tap water in the country (and then I'd quote some stupid statistic I read off Wikipedia). Sorry about that, Mom. I've started to rediscover tastes in the past week. The Frosted Flakes have been the best tasting thing so far. Cheez-Its were gross. Uncooked ramen tasted as featureless as always. I found some bread untouched by mold, a couple muffins wrapped in foil, but they tasted terrible, like a bad case of dry morning breath.

I'm feeling better now than I was a week ago though, that's for certain. Sleeping normally again is doing wonders for me psychologically. I feel more energetic, and I'm not nearly as depressed as I was before. Actually, I'm not really depressed at all. The leaves on the trees in my backyard are mostly orange and yellow now. Plant life seems to be fighting back for domain over the Earth at a harder rate than before. That's a nice, if eerie thought, seeing all of this as a kind of reset button for the flow of life on the planet. That's of course assuming this will affect the entire planet. I mean, yeah – it will, but humanity will survive. We're hardy as cockroaches, of course we will. I wonder how this will be remembered in the history books. I wonder what name they'll give it. "The Maddening Plague", or something like that? The infection certainly is the physical aspect of it, but I wonder how it will change human thought. Whatever nations of people survive, they will have bunkered down and shut themselves out from the world. The gradual dissolving of borders that the globalization of the past fifty years or so caused will be- no, scratch that- it certainly already has been undone by this catastrophe.

All this hypothesizing is making me hungry. An ice-cream sandwich would be amazing. I always sigh when I find myself wanting something I won't be able to have thanks to all of this, but I don't dwell on it anymore. I've pretty much come to terms with the inescapable sacrifice of past luxuries. Food, at a primal level, is still a necessity, though. Damn, what am I going to do? Though I hate to tell myself, I hate to even think the idea in my head, I'm slowly accepting the frightening truth.

I'm going to have to leave the house. Staying cooped up in here for the rest of my life might have worked (you know, ignoring that I would certainly go insane eventually), until I suddenly lost the ability to go without eating. This sounds silly saying out loud, considering the situation of the world around me, but I need to make a run to Kroger. Sugary foods stay good nearly forever, as long as they don't get wet, if I recall correctly. Anything sealed like canned drinks should be good as well.

I guess I really don't have a choice in the matter, do I then? I shouldn't be doing this. Something's probably going to happen again, like it did last time, and I'm either going to spiral back into depression or get myself killed. Damnit, I really don't want either of those. But I have to go. No choice. I don't know what's propelling me, what's making this such an easy decision to make when not even two weeks ago I told myself with absolute assurance I would never set foot outside this house again. Is it courage? Or perhaps a lack of caring for what happens to myself? Was I just blowing hot air out my ass when I said all that stuff back then?

Hell if I know. I put on the oversized black hoodie, and get my ratty old backpack, throwing in it a bunch of plastic bags we kept in the bottom of the pantry to eventually return to the grocery store for recycling. I grab one of the rifles I picked up, and stuff a small bit of ammo in my pocket, just in case. Sticking my elongated index finger into the trigger hole is awkward, like sticking a needle through cloth, but I eventually get it down. I don't bring anything else. I figure I'll need to be able to carry back home as much food as I can. With a thousand butterflies in my stomach, I open up the back door and step outside.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

I'm not sure why, but I expected it to be cold outside. Apocalypses are always cold, aren't they? Is it just my nervousness that made me assume that? Or do I just watch too many movies? I suppose the term 'nuclear winter', what we all thought was the most likely candidate for the how the world would end, has me presupposing ideas.

Of course, I can't feel the temperature. I hadn't thought of it beforehand, but once I noticed that I had absolutely no idea if it was freezing or a furnace outside, I really wished I had regained that human sense along with the ability and need to eat and sleep. Oh well.

I left through the back door of my house by habit. Behind my mother's house is one more block, then the middle school I attended long ago. I still hold quite a childish grudge against that place. Behind the middle school is a number of lots that were being developed into middle to high class houses before the plague struck. On the other side of that is my old high school, and across the street from that is the Holiday Manor shopping center, where the Kroger grocery store sits. It's really not a shopping center, but rather a sizeable handful of businesses and apartments all crammed together in the same block.

The air is deathly quiet. The lack of the background noise of the suburbs, cars off in the distance, was something I never really noticed until now, when it has completely disappeared. The sound of wildlife has been erased as well; there are no dogs barking, birds chirping or insects buzzing. Even the wind is absent. It's as if I and the world I used to know have been pulled into a vacuum. It all makes me terribly nervous, but I summon what little courage I can and press forward.

I'm about to hop over the fence to the yard behind ours when I get a better idea. Holding the gun in one hand, I slash with my hand across the chain link fence. For the first time I feel a little resistance cutting something up. It still does not take much effort to turn it into little bite-size metal chunks, however. What a wonderful stress reliever that is.

I walk to a house across the street from the middle school. Quietly, I scramble up to a bush and crouch behind it, my rifle at the ready. It's daytime, so any survivors who may be out there won't have much trouble spotting me, but my hypothesis is this: I'm well covered enough that if someone sees me from a distance, they'll see a silhouette of a figure holding a gun and moving at least with some sense of tactics or whatever, and won't think me infected. Maybe if I'm lucky I can hide first and actually speak with someone.

This is of course assuming there will be anyone left to speak with. Peering out from behind the bush onto the school grounds, I can't see a single person in sight, infected or not. Where has everyone gone? There are plenty of corpses sure, but nothing still living. Did that group of people that found me a week ago slaughter anyone left standing? My god, how can one have the stomach for such a thing? I shake the idea out of my head. The way is clear, and that's all that matters. I move from hiding spot to hiding spot, bush to bus stop to tree to car to another tree, until I'm in the area left half developed. There are several corpses of infected in construction uniforms. I trod carefully. I'm no expert in the least, but it seems like these infected were killed recently. Just because it seems safe, I tell myself, doesn't mean there isn't anyone waiting in ambush for infected wandering through, for me. My breathing becomes heavy. I can't tell if it's from fear or excitement. I can't really tell what any of my emotions are at the moment; I only know I'm flooded with them.

I walk around Ballard High School instead of through it. Reminded myself that my sister was in school when the infection came, I try not to think what about happened to her, and I certainly don't want to find out. Coming up upon the intersection of Brownsboro Road and Herr Lane, where Holiday Manor sits opposite my old high school, I remember vaguely what it looked like when I walked through here just days after I was infected. I can see the effect of time. The bodies have begun to decay in grotesque manner. Both infected and uninfected will turn into the same unidentifiable goop eventually, it seems. I was in a great deal of pain when I last walked down this street, but I can still see the destruction as it was, fresh and recent. All that pain I underwent must have been this second stage of the infection. It seems so long ago, like this last month or so has taken years. I can barely even begin to remember the frame of mind I once inhabited, when life was normal, and danger was a foreign word. Things made so much more sense then.

I enter the Kroger store through the back entrance, where the trucks pull in to unload their stuff. Less chance of bumping into anyone that way, and it's less walking distance. I used to work in a Kroger when I was in high school; though it wasn't this one, I still recognize the layout of the store. A rancid smell punctures my nose as I enter the hallway where the large freezer rooms are located. The food they kept frozen back here must be spoiled and rotten by now. Ignoring the stench, I sneak through to the store proper.

The place looks like a warzone. Bodies are flung about everywhere. Displays are knocked over. Cans, bottles, and containers of all sorts litter the floors. Light fixtures have broken, leaving broken glass spewed here and there like little minefields. I can't help but let out a whispery "Jeez…" upon the sight of it all. The grocery store was the sanctuary of the suburbs, the bastion of modernity. I remember when I was little, say 8 or 9, and I would act like I was a spy or a robber, hiding from the mom police, whenever we came to the grocery store. I would duck behind stands, sneak from aisle to aisle. How ironic that now I'm acting the exact same way, but from a real danger instead of a false one.

I stop at the cereal and candy aisle. I always hated how devious of a trick that was on the stores' part to put those two items together. Setting my rifle down, I open up my backpack and pull out the plastic bags. The swishing noise they make makes me paranoid as hell. Normally I wouldn't even hear it, but in this silence it's deafening. I fill up a couple bags with various foods, whatever is still sealed and looks like it won't go bad for some time. When they're filled I stick my arm through the holes in the bags and drape them from my shoulders. I'm not going to be able to grab much more and still be able to hold my gun, I realize. I make a mental list of things I need to get, and make my way through the store for them. Bottled water, though heavy, is a must. I grab a couple of canned veggies, because I can't live off of nothing but sugar, wheat, and corn products I tell myself. I'm screwed if I get a cavity, so I grab a thing of toothpaste. Some soap is taken for similar reasons.

I've lost some upper body strength. I would've been able to carry a little more than this before. Oh well. Holding my rifle with bags on my arms is awkward, but I manage. I leave the store through the front door this time, out of habit.

I decide to take a different route home this time. Instead of passing through the schools, I'll run past the McDonalds to the large field of grass and weeds, and then into the subdivision through an entrance a bit farther from my home than that from the schools. Even though I've lived around here for fifteen years and know the entire area by heart, it's closer to how I used to drive home almost every day, so it's more familiar to me.

The McDonalds is a sad sight. The drive-thru is still filled with vehicles, mostly SUVs and minivans. An infected employee is hanging out the drive-thru window, with a bag of rotting McDonalds food nearby. It's almost as if the oncoming plague was no worry to the people here, or perhaps its fright drove people here to get one last Big Mac. I walk up to the drive-thru window, just to marvel at the oddity of the scene. Then, I notice it: he's not dead. He grunts, and looks up at me.

I laugh. This scene has gotten old: the infected looking up at me, then not noticing any-

He screams.

"Wait, what?" I stutter. This was not a scream of terror, or of surprise. This was a scream of anger. The infected employee scrambles to his feet, babbling angry nonsense. What is this? What is going on? He smashes his head against the drive thru window, breaking it off its hinges, but is not fazed by it. Why the hell is he…? What the fuck is going on? I back up, away from the window and the line of dead cars near it.

He breaks free, and climbs on top of the stationwagon parked at the window. I am filled with fear. He's… he's going to kill me…

Bang.

I shoot him. The sound echoes for a moment. In that moment, time seems to have frozen, slowed to the speed of a glacier. The shot was a reflex; I can't remember the thought that made me do it. The bullet is buried in his brain. I don't know how I shot him so accurately. He falls to the ground.

The echoing stops. The infected man is lifeless, blood oozing from the bullet hole on his forehead. Did I…? I did that… didn't I? A million questions race through my head. Why did he…? How did I do that?

Another scream awakens me from my stupor, from far off somewhere. I drop my gun and grocery bags in shock. The distant hum of multiple voices follows it. I think… oh god… they're coming for me!


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

I scramble into the field behind the McDonalds. The grass there is tall, almost as tall as I am. It's wild and untamed, and it scratches my skin where it is bare. This is bad. This is so fucking bad. They're after me now. I don't know why. I don't have time to think why. I've gotten about fifty yards, but I still hear them. I just have to keep running. I just-

I trip. My face crashes into the grass and weeds. Shit…

I'm frozen in fear. I can't move. I only listen. I can hear the background gibberish of infected behind me. But… it's not getting louder… It doesn't sound like they know where I am. Do they? I don't know. I want to turn around and check, but I'm too afraid to move. My gun is gone. I can't defend myself if they spot me. My bags of food are gone, too. Is that what they were after perhaps? Something I grabbed from the store? That sounds too ridiculous to be true.

The noises have subsided. Are they… done? Did they give up? Do they ever give up? Damn it, I should know this- I'm infected. Not like them, but… augh! I want to get up. I _need _to get up. Slowly. I'll do it very… (I move a muscle) slowly…

I can move softly enough that any sound in the grass is masked by the slight wind in the air. Turning around, I lie back on my elbows and crane my head up slightly to see if I can look past the tall grass. I can't. Dangerous… this is very very dangerous… I shouldn't be doing this. I must be getting gutsy… I almost miss being entirely paranoid like before.

I turn back around on my hands and knees and carefully… extremely carefully… rise to a ducking position and begin to wade through the grass, keeping from disturbing its flowing windswept motion. I'm so nervous I can't think about anything other than my movement. Every jerk of the muscle, every slight move in the joints… I concentrate on every bit of it. I hear every stray noise that floats into my ear. The infected aren't following me. They don't see me. At least I don't think they see me. I so hope they don't see me.

I near the edge of the field of grass. On the other side is Herr Lane, and my subdivision. Hopefully the neighborhood is still as empty of infected as it was when I left. I don't remember hearing any screams from this direction when they massed to attack. I peek my head out from the grass. Empty. Holy crap, what a relief. I look both ways before crossing the street, for infected though… not cars, obviously.

The coast is clear. I gulp. "Nothing to it but to do it." I whisper, and make a run for it. Not so much a full out, 'Oh my god there's a monster chasing me' run, but a low to the ground, quiet, 'I'm acting like a ninja' run. There are no cars in the way, thankfully. That would have been too much noise and hassle to get around.

I was right in my assumption that the neighborhood would still be empty. I sneak from hiding place to hiding place, as I did on the way to the grocery store. Damn! I just realized I left my bags. What a wasteful trip. I stop a couple times to catch my breath, and once to stop, hide and investigate a noise I thought I heard. It sounded like a crunchy leaf being stepped on. Could be anything, I tell myself and proceed home.

When I make it to my front yard, I break out of a cautious run and into a casual walk. Never before have I been so relieved to be here. I stop for a moment to catch my breath and regain my energy for a moment, looking at the ground with my palms resting on my knees and my flat hair dangling in front of my face. I let out a sigh and take a glance around the area. To my right is my brother's motorcycle he left here a couple years ago. Damn thing never did work. To my left is… wait what the fuck is that? There something in the distance. A lamppost… or is that…?

SHIT. I spot multiple figures three or four houses down. They spotted me as well, no doubt! They're coming my way at the pace of a brisk jog. I tear open the front door and run in with a speed only instinct could provide. I run to the same hiding place: my room. This time, however I shut and lock the door immediately. Then, I listen. I have to keep quiet. I have to hear… I just lost a mob at the McDonalds because they didn't know where to find me; I know I can do it again. If I just stay hidden long enough, they'll lose interest, just like before. I hear no noises of infected. I lost them! …Right?

A voice, male. "It was this house! I saw them go in here!" No way… uninfected? Survivors? Again? Do I have my… No! My rifle is in the living room! I'm defenseless!

Another voice, this one female and older. "You sure you want to go in, then?"

"Of course, we have to save everyone we can, right?"

"You're too naïve, kid."

Wait… they seem friendlier than the last. Is this a blessing? Should I feel lucky? They still might have guns! No, they have to! They wouldn't survive this long without weapons. Will they shoot me, then? I almost want to… I think… I think I want to speak to them. Should I?

Yes… yes I should.

"H…Hello?" I address.

A second female voice, this one younger. "Hello? Where are you?"

I can barely get my words out. "I… I… I-I uh… um… I'm over…"

The same voice. "I think she's this way, you all. Are you over here?"

"Yes. Yes! I'm- hold on! Hold on!" I don't know what I'm doing. I must be mad. "I haven't talked with anyone in a month, I need… just hold on!"

The older voice spoke up again. "Give her time, Ann. Don't rush her." She then whispers something I can't hear.

"She might be hurt, though." The woman apparently named Ann replied. "Are you hurt in there?"

"I'm fine!" I snap. "I'm sorry! I…" I think for a moment on what to say next. "You all… are uninfected, obviously. You… kinda scared me back there. H-How did you escape infection?"

The male voice speaks up again. He sounds like a teenager. "Oh, we didn't escape it. We're immune."

What.

Immune!? What is this kid talking about? "Immune?" I shout.

"Well, yeah." The kid responds. "Of course we are. Wouldn't have gotten very far if we weren't. Aren't you, too? Isn't that why you're still talking to us?"

"What the fuck?!" I exclaim out loud, without thinking. "How are there people who are…?"

"Wait, um… ma'am?" The younger woman speaks up. "Are you saying you're… not immune?" A pause. "Um, guys… I don't think we shouldn't go near her. We're probably crawling with the virus, and I sure as hell am not going to be the one to infect someone still clean."

"No, I'm not immune, I've already been-!" I stop myself mid-sentence, but I've already said too much.

"Already been… what?"

"N-N-N-Nothing! Nothing! I didn't say anything!" Oh my god oh my god I so fucked up! I let them know something's not right with me! There are people who are immune to the virus? How was I supposed to guess that!? "This door is locked! You can't open it! Don't come near it! Don't!"

"Calm down, missy." The older woman says. "We're not going to hurt you."

"But I- But… Are you all seriously immune? You didn't… you didn't change at all? Not even… like skin turning gray and glowing eyes? Nothing?" I have to know. Can these people actually be serious?

"Of course we didn't. We've been holding a conversation here. The infected don't talk to people, missy, they just kill." Ann shushes her, whispering that she'll fright me.

"That's not true! They don't all mindlessly… um… kill people! And… and uh…" Should I really be telling them this? "… there are some that will talk with you."

"What on Earth are you talking about?" the teenage retorts. "Have you seen an infected before? Yeah, of course you must have! You were out there! We saw you run in the house!"

"H-How much?" I ask.

"How much what?"

"How much of me did you see?"

They pause before anyone answers. Ann is the one to eventually respond. "Not… much, I guess. You ran in the house as soon as we noticed you there."

"Then I guess you didn't see." I can't believe I'm about to say what I'm about say, but I don't think I have much of a choice. They'll find out sooner or later. "You… you promise you won't shoot me?"

"Darling, why would we-" the older woman interjects.

"Do you promise?!" I shout.

"Yes, of course."

"No matter what?"

"Ma'am, we would never shoot an innocent person in cold blood. This may be the apocalypse, but we are human, not monsters." I bite my lip. The monster they're talking about is me, but they don't know it. Can I really trust these people to their word?

Lights dance about from underneath the doorway. "I can see your flashlights under the door. I'm… I'm not opening the door until you turn them off."

"Yes, that's fine," Ann says as I see the lights vanish, "but why-"

"I'm freaking out enough here as it is without-! Just, please… thank you."

I grab the lock on the doorknob of my room with my knuckles and unlock it.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

The door opens. Three people are standing in my hallway, all in total shock. The moment I realized they were going to be good on their word, all the butterflies in my stomach disappeared and I changed to feel instead like the patient with the embarrassing medical condition confronting her family. I can't blame them for being unable to say a thing. They look like totally uninfected, clean (apparently immune) human beings, two women and one man. The African-American woman who looks to be the same age as me must be Ann. The other woman is much older, in her sixties or maybe even seventies, though she looks physically fit, like she jogs around the block a dozen times every morning. The male voice belongs to a guy who (I was right) is a teenager, most likely in high school before the infection hit. He's slightly chubby, with scruffy red hair and a T-shirt from some anime.

It must have only been a handful of seconds that passed in silence, but they were long seconds. The three of them are literally speechless. I almost crack a smile at the strange power I currently hold over them.

Our silence is interrupted. "Hey, are you all okay?" A man in a button-down dress shirt and slacks holding an automatic rifle turns into the hallway. "Oh, you went silent all of a sudden. I had to check- WHOA!" He spots me, and raises his gun, and the halogen light fills my eyes.

"NO! Turn off that light!" My god the light! My vision is gone, replaced with white pain. I shriek and stumble back into my room onto the floor. Who made that fucking light? It burns my eyes, sending flares of pain through my head with every heart beat.

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" the other three shout.

"But that was a witch, wasn't it?" the new person responds. I push the backs of my hands into my closed eyelids.

"Yes… she is…" I hear Ann mumble. "Here, are you…" her voice trails off. I'm not listening to them. I can't. The throbbing in my head is too intense. I can't concentrate on anything else. I feel the sensation of touch on my shoulder, and in a reflex I cringe from it. It happens again, muddled. I think I'm… I'm losing…

I wake up. Wait, what? Did I pass out? I slowly open my eyes. I'm in my room still, sitting up against my dresser. I can hear chatting in the distance. Then, "Hey. You awake?" I turn to see the woman, Ann, sitting on my bed.

"I… I uh… yes."

Silence. She doesn't say anything. She only stares at me. It feels embarrassing. I can't meet her eye-to-eye. Is she frightened by the way I look? Is she entranced? Am I a spectacle? This is unnerving; I want to know.

"W-What?" I mumble, turning a shoulder to her.

She snaps out of her daze with an "Oh!" and fiddles with her hair absentmindedly. Now she looks like the embarrassed one. Another silence. I need to be the one to break it.

"Um," I begin, "your name is Ann, right?"

"Y-Yes…" she stutters. She looks scared half to death. It's not a look I'm used to seeing in an adult. I should say something. But what?

"I guess I must look pretty freaky." I crack the most sincere smile I can.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She interjects. "I… should be nicer, but this is just...." She stands up. "Do you mind if I open up the curtains? The light won't hurt you, will it?"

"What? No, it's fine." As she tears the curtains open, sunlight pours into the room, revealing all the dust floating about. I guess it's just artificial light that freaks me out. I wish I knew why. A new reflex of sorts? "I can't believe I fainted like that." I murmur.

"What?"

"N-Nothing. How long was I out for?"

She sits back on the bed. "Just a few minutes. If weren't standing in between you all, Jim probably would've shot you into Swiss cheese."

"Jim, is he…?"

"Speak of the devil." She points to my doorway, where the man who almost shot me is standing. He stands about the same height I did before I shrunk; about 5 feet 6 inches or so. He's of Asian descent, and because I'm a white girl from the suburbs I can't tell if he's Chinese, Korean, or what. He's dressed neatly, dress shirt and slacks, business casual, as though he were about to head to work (minus the blood splatters staining his clothes here and there). Behind him is the redheaded kid in the anime t-shirt. They both are sweating profusely. A fearful sweat, I imagine. Neither of them are holding a weapon, though the man Jim has a sidearm holstered. It can't be that hot in here.

I let another brief awkward silence pass, in the hopes one of them will say something. They don't. It's making me nervous. "So…" I say, "don't everyone speak up at once." Please say something, anyone! I do stupid things when I'm nervous!

The kid is the one with the courage to say something. It always seems to be that way – the younger someone is, the farther away they are from death, and less threatening of a thing it seems to be. Not that I see myself as some avatar of death or something. Quite the contrary, really; I have trouble squishing bugs. "So, you're really okay then?"

I arch an eyebrow at him. "As okay as living in the apocalypse, sure."

He cuts in "I-I mean… like… you're um… all still there in the head, right? You're not going to attack us?"

Thank you! I've been waiting for someone to ask that. "No, I'm not. Of course not! Attack you, that is. I'm not like the other infected. I know that much." They don't all show it as opaque, but I can tell they all breathe a sigh of relief hearing me say that. "Like you said, I'm still talking to you… right? I mean, not only that but I haven't seen any other infected that look like this." I lift up my hands and wiggle my fingers around to show them what I'm talking about. Ann and the kid flinch.

Jim stays a bit calmer. "In fact, we have." He says.

I stand up immediately. "No shit!" I exclaim. Are they serious? "You saw someone that looked just like this… just like me? Creepy long fingers and all?"

"Two, actually."

"What did they say? Wait, did they say anything?" I ask them.

It's the kid's turn to reply. "I wish. They just cried, instead."

The kid gets another eyebrow arched at him. "Cried?"

"Well, I dunno. It just sounded like it. The first one we thought was a little- er… a girl crying so we followed the sound until we saw her sitting down on a sidewalk. Ann said something to it… uh, her- sorry. Ann said something to her, which that and our flashlights kinda got her attention and pissed her off, apparently. She came running at us full speed. Scared the living shit out of us! Probably would've killed us if we didn't all have a full clip-"

"Magazine." corrects Ann.

"-magazine, whatever. A full magazine ready to unload on her." I wince a bit. How can he talk about something like that so nonchalantly?

"What about the second one? You mentioned another." I say.

"We went out of our way to avoid her, that's what. Turned off our lights and snuck past. Never even bothered us. Weird, huh?" Very.

Ann stands up. She seems angry, or disturbed. Is she not as willing to accept the situation as the others? "I'm getting something to eat from my pack." She says, and walks past Jim and the kid.

I feel my stomach growl. "I should eat something as well. Can I… get through?" I inch towards the two guys at my door, still being extremely careful not to startle either of them. I'm not out of danger yet, I tell myself. I never will be.

"You eat?" Jim asks.

I pause, unsure of how to respond to that. "Increasingly." I tell him. They make more than enough room for me to pass by. That's fine. I don't let it bug me. If I were in their situation I wouldn't want to be anywhere near me either. The hallway is slightly dark. The red tint of night creeps back into my eyes for just a moment, before I reach the kitchen, where windows let light into the house.

Tearing open the pantry, I am reminded of the reason this strange encounter occurred in the first place. "Right." I groan. "I had gone to Kroger. Damn it." There isn't much left in here at all, except for miniscule things such as spices. I wonder how long I can live off that. I spy a tomato soup can hiding in the back I missed before. Reaching back, I puncture the top with a finger and drag it out.

"You're just going to eat it like that?" Ann asks. I wheel around to find her looking my way from a corner of the room, by the back door. Before I can respond, she turns her head back towards the window, to stare off into space.

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?" I take a moment to listen for the others. They're having a slow conversation by the front door. It sounds like the older woman is with them as well. "I'm kinda running low on food here. You all caught me running back from the grocery store."

"Where's the food then?" She asks.

"I uh… I dropped it. I lost it running from a mob at the McDonalds."

"They attack _you_?"

"They didn't use to." Her glance shot back my way immediately at this. "This was the first time one did, and-"

"Any idea why?" She interrupts. She seems genuinely interested in this. Well, I guess that makes sense.

"Not a clue." I pause. "I haven't had a chance to think about it."

"What if you had to guess?"

"If I had to guess… I guess… I was acting too uninfected. You know, carrying bags of groceries." Wait, that's not right. "No, that wouldn't make sense!" I rub my forehead in thought "I've laughed at infecteds' faces, I've read books sitting next to them… I don't know. I haven't a clue." We both sigh at the same time. I cut open the rest of the soup can's lid, and carefully drink the tomato goop, wincing at the taste.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

"It's about to start raining." The kid enters the kitchen to say. I look out the window. It's a little cloudy.

"You sure?" Asks Ann.

"Walk outside." He says. "You can feel it." They're talking to each other, but they keep shooting passing glances at me. It's understandable, but annoying. I set the can of goop down. Ann opens the backdoor and steps outside. A breeze swoops into the house and makes the dangling strings on my hoodie dance about. I wonder if it's a cool or warm breeze. "Windy too." The kid adds. He looks at me again, as if saying "Aren't you going to follow her?" No kid, I'm not. Quit looking at me.

He's still staring. "Hi there." I say to snap him out of it. I sound bored, almost angry. Am I?

He takes a step back. "Oh! Sorry. I uh… you have tomato on your nose." I begin to reach for a roll of paper towels that's been sitting on the same spot on the kitchen counter for weeks now, when the kid says "Here, I'll get it." No you won't. I back away from him and wipe it off with the back of my hand instead. He sprouts a look on his face like he just ran over my pet, or something equally terrible. "I'm not gonna hurt you – don't worry."

"Isn't that supposed to be my line?" I quip. It's not really that I'm afraid of him; I just don't like the idea of him touching me.

Ann walks back inside. "It's already drizzling out there."

The kid shifts his attention. "What's the game plan then?" He asks her.

"Hell if I know. Ask Lorraine."

I enter the conversation. "Lorraine, is she…?"

"The woman from earlier, yes. She's the one leading this crazy ass expedition of ours. Says we're going to Fort Knox to hole up with the military." That actually doesn't sound like such a bad idea. In fact, it sounds like the best idea I've heard since the infection struck. "Are we staying here, then? Where is she anyway?" Ann asks.

"In here." A voice from the living room responds. I recognize it as the older woman from earlier. I've never heard that name 'Lorraine' before. "The girl with you in there?" She asks.

Ann and I exchange glances. Hers is quickly withdrawn out of reflex. I eject an inaudible sigh. "I am." I reply.

"Come out here for a second, would you? Lemme take a look at you." Her tone is commanding, so much that any qualms I might have with her order are struck down and before I know it I'm in the living room as requested. Lorraine sits on the sofa. My first impression of her is that of a war veteran. Unlike the other three, there is little, if any, fear present in her. Her age, though clearly present, does not signify frailty at all, but rather experience and power. I on the other hand am shaking in my tennis shoes. She holds a lit cigarette is held in one hand, while the other is resting on some kind of assault rifle that's resting on the sofa next to her. Upon seeing that loaded weapon next to her, the fear in me grows. I'm simultaneously scared and just a little bit annoyed. This is my house, right? Why am I so afraid in my own house? Should I confront my fears, and say something?

"You look scared half to death right now, you know that?" the woman says, almost with a laugh.

"Well…" I stammer, "…you've got your hand on uh… a very large gun next to you." I swallow a lump of fright in my throat after I end the sentence.

She takes her hand off the rifle with a jolt. I notice some ashes from the cigarette fall on the sofa. "I'm sorry, that's an old habit of mine. I thought I lost it after I stopped serving, but the times have brought it back, I guess. Silly, really. I never even saw combat all my years in the military." She takes a drag from her cigarette and holds it in a moment before exhaling. "Something wrong, honey?"

Yes, plenty of things. Had you not noticed? But right now, specifically… "You're getting ash on the upholstery."

Her brow raises in surprise. Doubt she expected me to say that. I had plenty of other things to complain about, but that for some odd reason just seemed the most pressing matter. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Another bad habit, that." She puts out the cigarette and stuffs what's left of it back in a carton. I move to the opposite side of the room and take a seat in my mother's green recliner. The rain starts to pour outside.

"I know… it's stupid, right? I'm stupid. The world's ending but I'm still worrying about a sofa."

"The world's not ending, missy. Sure, it may look pretty grim – double from your standpoint, I imagine – but think: the Black Plague killed almost half of the world's population but we just kept on going. People will recover from this. It'll be messy, but we'll recover." She pauses for a moment, leans back in the sofa and looks up at the ceiling before continuing. "Why I remember when I was young my mother would tell me of the Spanish Flu and how it devastated her hometown in Western Samoa."

I look up at the ceiling too. "I guess it's been a while since the last real epidemic; we were overdue for a big one." I say.

"Doesn't get much bigger than this, though. I'll give you that. Last thing I can think of… let's see…"

"Bird flu and SARS don't count." I interrupt.

"This is before your time, but the AIDS scare in the 80s had people spelling the end of the world as well."

I turn to look at her. "No, I remember it. Vaguely, though. I have a couple memories from a long, long time ago of my parents warning me or something."

"Really?" She responds. There is a pause. "How old are you now?"

I push the razor sharp ends of my index fingers against each other and look away. "Older than I look. I don't know why the infection decided to make me look fifteen. The answer to aging, perhaps?"

Lorraine laughs. "'Answer to aging, my foot. You ask me, growing old's the best thing that ever happened to me." I echo the laugh, though mine is hesitant and rather fake. There's another pause, before she speaks up again. "I don't believe I caught your name, missy. I'm Lorraine, if you didn't catch that earlier. Lorraine Oliver. You are…?"

I freeze for a moment.

No… no, I shouldn't. I shouldn't tell them.

"I… I um…" I can't get any words out.

"Is something wrong?" Lorraine asks.

I cringe. "Well… kind of. I did have a name, of course." How do I say this? "But it was for a different person. Not the little infected girl here now."

"Now honey, you really don't believe that, do you?" I don't say anything. "You look different, but you're still the same person on the inside, aren't you?"

"What did you call the other two you found?" I ask.

"Beg your pardon?"

"That man you all are with, Jim was his name? He said you all found two other infected that looked like me. Did you call them anything?"

"Well yes, we called them witches. I can't remember who thought up the name, but honey those girls were dead – long gone…" she keeps talking, but I'm not listening. I'm thinking. Witch… Witch… like The Wizard of Oz perhaps?... hm… Witch… Wicked Witch of the West… she was played by Margaret Hamilton… Margaret… Maggie? "…and 'Witch' isn't really a name anyway to be calling someone." Lorraine finishes.

"No, it isn't. I guess you can call me Maggie, then."

"There, see. That's better. Though, I'm going to guess that isn't your real name, is it?"

I shake my head no.

"Well, that's fine. Pleased to meet you, Maggie."

"Likewise." Glad that's over with. "I'd shake hands, but… you know."

Lorraine laughs, but is cut short by a boom of thunder. "That's a problem. I suppose we're staying here for the night, then."

Ann's voice enters from the kitchen. "I've been wondering when you were going to answer that."

"Honey, have you been listening in on us?" Lorraine shouts.

"Not that big a house." Ann replies.

I stand up. "I don't mind at all. There are a few blankets on the beds and in the hall closet. Don't go downstairs, though."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

As night crept closer, the four people boarding the night at my mother's house and I talked. In that time I learned about some things about them.

The kid's name is Nicholas Macintosh, but he goes by his middle name, Greg. He is (or perhaps I should say _was_) a senior at Eastern High School. Apparently, the school was closed the day the infection struck for some reason, and Greg repeatedly would say that's the only reason he's still alive. He and Lorraine are related; she's his maternal grandmother. Neither of them knows the whereabouts of Greg's parents; Lorraine's daughter and son-in-law.

Lorraine herself I had already had a chat with earlier, but I quickly learned she was the kind of person to make the topic of a conversation gravitate towards herself, whether she meant to or not, and thus I learned quite a bit about her. She lived a great deal of her life overseas with her husband in the military (she never specified whether it was army, navy or what). Most of her time she was stationed in Korea, in the two decades following the Korean War, just before everyone else was being drafted to Vietnam, and later in her life in Okinawa, Japan for what she called "pointless office jobs", until she and her husband reached the age of retirement and moved back to Kentucky to be with her family.

Jim lived next door to Lorraine. They both lived out in some old, upper-class neighborhood in Prospect, a good ways north-east of here, almost into Oldham County. He just turned forty years old; he said his birthday was just last week. Jim moved to the United States from South Korea when he was a small child. His name was originally Jin, but his parents decided to "Americanize" it when they arrived to help him fit in growing up. When I asked him if he ever thought of changing it back, he asked me why I wasn't using my birth name. Touché. He worked a 9-to-5 job for a banking firm downtown. He told me his job wasn't exciting in the least. I believed him.

Ann bears no relation to the other three, other than what the past week of constant fighting and survival has created. She won't talk to me much either. All I've been able to gleam is that she was born in 1985; two years before me. She was attending night classes at Jefferson Community and Technical College, and was close to reaching a degree when the infection struck. She worked full-time as a driver for UPS to pay for school.

The day of the infection, Greg was doing some yard work for Lorraine to earn a little extra money. He was out in the front yard mowing the lawn when both Ann and Jim arrived on the scene. Ann was delivering a package; I asked, but no one can remember what it was. Jim ran out of his house frantically, telling the two they need to see what's on the news. "This is serious! You have to see what's on the news!" He said. He was having trouble finding the right words to say. He knew no one would believe him unless they saw it for themselves. Ann said "Someone just sign for the package. I have a lot more places to go", but Jim persisted it would only take a moment, and that their lives were in danger.

The three of them walked into Lorraine's house, where she already had the TV on to CBS, where the words "LATE BREAKING NEWS" were displayed in large bold letters at the bottom of the screen. "Half the channels are broadcasting this. I can't believe this…" she stuttered.

"What is it?" Ann asked.

"It's a plague." Jim responded. "At least, I think it is. It's making people go insane as soon as they come into contact with it."

"What on Earth?" Greg gasped. Lorraine shushed them all and told them to listen.

The anchors reported they had footage of the 'inexplicable carnage', as the man put it. He was choking up as he said the words. The camera then switched to one from a news helicopter hovering over downtown. A reporter shouted into her microphone, but her words were being drowned out in the mass of noise. Outside the helicopter was the sight of a warzone. The streets were filled with vehicles all in a chaos, a crowd was running in a mad wave from a menace unseen on the camera, people were trampling over each other in their attempt to flee. Some shouted at the helicopter, both furious curses and pleas for the lives. "The scene here is absolutely horrifying, I don't know I can say… oh my god!" The reporter cried as the camera swerves to a skyscraper, the Humana building, where two figures crash through a window and plummet to the sidewalk below. A howl somewhere in the distance echoes across the buildings. "Nobody knows where it came from! It's turning everyone mindless… almost like they're zombies or something! Everyone needs to hole up in their house, let no one-"

At that moment the picture skipped multiple times, then turned to noiseless static. There was a silence in the house none could find the voice to permeate. Lorraine tried changing the channel. The same fizz greeted them on every station.

"What…" Greg uttered, "what the hell was that?" No one knew how to answer. "What the hell WAS that?"

"I told you! It's… I don't know, a biological weapon maybe? I don't know!" Jim exclaimed.

Greg's breathing became quick. "I have to get home… My parents… I have to-"

Lorraine interrupted. "It's too late for that. That's too dangerous."

"You have a better plan?" Ann retorted. "I'm about to get the fuck outta here, too!"

"Were you not watching that?" Lorraine shouted. "Did you see that? How are you going to run from that? Do you even know what that was?"

"Well, what you suggest we do then?" Ann posed.

Lorraine thought for a moment. They all thought. "The bunker."

"Grandpa's old Cold War bunker?" Nick asked. "That's still down there?"

"You remember him always boasting about how it would withstand a nuke, right?" Said Lorraine. "I never really believed him, but I'm sure we would be safe. There's still enough rations and water in there to last months, as well. I say we let this thing, whatever it is, blow over. Better safe than sorry."

"I'm going to call my parents. They can get over here-"

"The phone lines are out. Cell phones aren't working either." Jim broke him off. Greg cursed.

"That's not good." Lorraine mumbled. "That means the destruction's close. We need to get in there now! Unless anyone else has a better idea?"

No one did. The four of them stayed in that bunker for fifteen days, until they simultaneously realized that they were going nuts and that it was probably safe outside by now. Being that the bunker was originally designed in case war broke out, a stash of firearms was kept inside it. Lorraine showed the other three how to use them, before they hesitantly opened the heavy metal door and stepped outside.

They met their first infected within half an hour. It was one of their neighbors, though they knew not who. When it was obvious the man was out for their blood, Lorraine fired a burst of rounds into him. The others were shocked at first at the apparent murder, but quickly learned to follow suit. Thus began their trek through the wasted suburbs and highways. Most of the time was spent in stealth, avoiding detection as best as possible, but sometimes staying hidden was impossible, and violence was the solution. They had yet to be overwhelmed by a number they did not have enough bullets for, but one lucky infected did get through their phalanx of fire to scratch Jim across the cheek. The other three were scared to death he would become one of them in little time, as was Jim, but it never happened. This was when they came to the realization that they must be immune to the disease. "I mean think about it." Ann had said. "We don't know how hardy this disease is. It could be in the air, in the water. If we weren't immune, we surely would have caught it even without being injured."

This lightened their fears slightly, but they still had plenty to be afraid of. The other infected that looked like me, the 'witch' they called her – I hadn't forgotten the story. Apparently she took at least ten times more firepower to take down that your average infected. Am I really that durable now? I don't feel like it. The day I blacked out and woke up a "witch" I cut my cheek just as normal. Not to mention I was having trouble carrying four or five grocery bags.

I set the thought aside as I lie down to sleep. It had been another extremely exhausting day for me. I'm getting rather tired of those.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

I awake in the middle of the night. When I notice I am awake, I try to remember what I was just dreaming about, only to discover I can't remember a thing about it. Fifteen minutes later and this nasty just-woke-up taste in my mouth is not letting me get back to sleep. I sit up and force myself out of bed. The world is colored in night-vision red light. I open my bedroom door and the welcome sign I hung on it for a reason I can't remember makes a 'clang' noise. Right. I remember now – there are people sleeping in my house. How weird is that? I suppose I should keep quiet. Fortunately for me, my destination the bathroom is right across the hall from my room. I sneak in, but don't bother to close the door. I'll just brush my teeth to get rid of the taste and then go back to bed. To do that though, I have to look in the mirror. I've been trying really hard to avoid looking in mirrors or puddles since I was infected. Looking at myself in this grotesque state of being not only reminds me of just how messed up my world is right now which ushers in a pestilence-like depressing mood, but it's extremely unnerving to boot. The little girl's face looks back at me. I'm not going to call it mine. It's not. Not at all. And with everything stained red in this strange night-vision of mine it looks even more disturbing. I get real close to the mirror. I want to see if I still have eyeballs. The glowing just gets more intense. I can't see anything past it. Damn.

Whatever, though. I'm still half-asleep right now, and thus too tired to care. Not too tired to brush my teeth with knife fingers, though. I must finally be adept with these things, now. That's nice to know.

The floor creaks outside the bathroom. In an instant I turn to see what made the noise. "Oh fuck!" A voice whisper-shouts. It's Ann. I can see her clearly, though she probably can't see me. "Jesus, Maggie… that is you, right? You scared the shit out of me!"

"Uh… sorry?" I mumble with a mouth full of toothpaste.

"What are you doing up? Can't sleep or something?" She asks in a whisper.

I take a swig from a bottle of water I'd kept in the bathroom for just this, swish it around in my mouth and spit the remains out in the bathtub. "Something like that. Brushing my teeth."

Ann sighs. "Whatever, I'm going back to bed; if I can even sleep after that – waking up to see two beady little red eyes in the dark. Shit."

"They're red? Seriously?"

"How would you not know that?" Ann whispers after a moment of contemplation over the strangeness of my question.

"Um, I've… kinda been avoiding looking at myself. I'm not a pretty sight, in case you haven't noticed." There is a pause, filled with the background noise of crickets chirping in the night. Didn't she say she was going to bed? Is there something she wants to say to me? Her eyes are darting. She's silent, though. I have a question I want… no, I need to ask. I should do it now. "You… you said the four of you were going to Fort Knox, right?"

"I did." She responds. I can see in her face that she already knows what I'm going to ask her next.

"Could you… take me along with you?" I say.

She sighs, and stands in silence for a moment, thinking of how best to respond. "Not my place to say. Or rather…" Another sigh. "I'd like to say yes, but… I don't know if the others would agree. Look, it's late. I'm tired. Can this discussion wait until the morning?"

"Of course! Of course. Sorry - I'm sorry. I'll let you get back to sleep, it's just… I'm sorry." No more words were exchanged; the two of us quickly returned to our rest.

I wake up to a house of silence. I open my eyes, squinting at first. What time is it? Is no one else up yet? I don't hear anyone. I should get up.

My bedroom is filled with daylight. I throw the blanket off, accidentally making a tear in it with a finger. I scoot over to the edge of my bed, where a small table is sitting next to it. On the table is my watch. I pick it up and check the time. It's 10:40. It's that late? What on Earth? No way all four of them would still be asleep. I figured they'd leave at daybreak.

I start to freak out. "Hey! Anyone out there?" I shout. I probably shouldn't have. Just because the neighborhood seemed purged of infected last time I looked doesn't mean there couldn't be a gaggle of them outside now. There is no response of any type to my hail, however. That's not good. I quickly get on the first clothes I see, a music festival t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans and open my door to the rest of the house.

Empty. The house is completely empty. They left. They left me here without a single word. Without telling me anything. They… why? Why would they do this? Did I say something? Was it something I said? Did they not believe me? Like, when I said I wasn't going to attack them? Or do they… did they just decide they were better off leaving me alone? That's that then, huh? I'm just the lone oddity in the world – the freak better to ignore than to help?

I clench my teeth in anger and pace through the house. I had an idea – a hypothesis on the infection. It made sense, too, and I was going to tell them it if they'd take me with them! Seriously, why did they have to leave! It makes me so fucking infuriated! I thought I actually had something to aim towards here.

Channeling my anger into one mad swing, I swipe my hand straight through the dining room table. It severs into two clean-cut pieces and crashes to the floor. The noise and clamor brings me to my senses. My breathing is heavy; I take a moment to catch it. "Well, this sucks." I mumble. "What the hell do I do now?" As if the cosmos wished to answer my question itself, I happened to notice on my mother's chair an item that was not there previously: a pair of binoculars, resting on top of a piece of paper. In a curiosity-driven burst of speed, I dash to the chair. I carefully grab the piece of paper out from under the binoculars. It is a note, written in a decidedly feminine handwriting.

"Couldn't convince the others. If you still want to come, meet us at Warwick Park. The binoculars are an extra pair we had. Whatever you end up doing, good luck."

Ann, you are awesome.

I waste no time grabbing the things needed to chase after them. They could already be there for all I know. Okay - gun, check. Lots of ammo, check. Bandages, check. Hat (gotta have my hat), check. Food… well whatever I can find that's left in my pantry, check. Do I need a bar of soap? I should probably grab a bar of soap. Cleaning wounds, etc. And finally, the satchel to carry it all in… check.

I stop at my front door. The realization finally dawned on me. I will probably never see my house again. This is it. This is actually it. I'm never coming back here. I let out a heavy sigh. You really wanna go? You know it's a fight for survival out there, right? No, that's not the way to think. I stopped second-guessing myself a long time ago. Of course it's do or die. There's no turning back this time. I'm not questioning my actions anymore. What happens happens! Rifle in hand, I'm ready to kill any and all infected that cross my path. I open the door and walk out into remnants of the world.

Before I left the house I grew up in, I carved into the side of the house near the front door my name, with a message explicitly stating that this is my house, and I'm still alive and kicking ass out there.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen**

Hiding. Yes, hiding. Hiding is the best strategy. Have to hide. Have to keep hidden. I didn't hide from that first one, no… no I didn't. I should have.

It wasn't even five minutes from when I set foot out of my house that I found my first infected, and he was just as ready to kill me as I was afraid the infected would still be. Man, can they run like hell, too. I hesitated for only a small moment, before firing at him. My aim wasn't as fantastic as it had been the other day; I merely got him in the shoulder. The infected man wasn't fazed at all by it. His arm merely started flapping in the breeze as he continued to run at me like meat hanging on a hook. I stammered for a moment. I suppose my naivety assumed this was a video game, and every infected would go down in a shot. I fired again at him. This one pierced his gut. Blood immediately came gushing out, and the man realized he was done for (assuming any infected other than I have any bit of self-awareness to speak of). He looked down at his fatal wound and stumbled to the ground, before bleeding to death. I had no time to pause at the kill. I knew this. I still know this. There could be another one coming. No, there certainly _is_ another one coming. Find a hiding spot. Find cover. Gain the upper hand before the fight even begins. That's what I have to do.

So that's why I'm hiding now, crouched behind a red pick-up truck, one of those trucks so ridiculously large you wonder why anyone living in a city would need one. It's parked in a driveway just two houses away from Herr Lane. These once-busier roads are the tricky parts, here. From my house to Warwick Park I have to cross two streets undoubtedly flooded with vehicles, and therefore flooded with infected: Herr Lane and Westport Road. The rest of the way there is through subdivisions and apartment complexes, where the infected are sparser and the places to hide more frequent.

I peek out from around the truck. I spy four, maybe five infected at least. No good. Way too many. I've shot twice thus far, and each of these magazines holds twenty bullets. Three bullets to each infected sounds nice, but more'll come, for sure. If I get caught needing to reload with infected on my ass, I'm screwed. I can't do that quickly with these goofed up hands. Besides, it's not worth it if I can get away without a fight elsewhere. This street's too close to the elementary school. It's probably jam-packed with people that were trying to get their kids out of school. I'll go a few blocks south, yeah. That should work. I peek out again. I should be too far away from them to notice. I can see them fine, though. I'm not taking any chances. After all, my eyesight stayed relatively the same (ignoring creepy night vision), so why shouldn't there's? I creep away from the main road a few houses further for good measure before sneaking into a yard to cross over to the next block.

There's an infected girl in a backyard I sneak into. Alerted to my presence, she makes a strange animal-like yelp and comes at me. I'm losing it, I didn't even notice her until I was in the yard. I fire a round, and it buries into her neck. Her head quickly loses its attachment to the rest of her body after that and plops onto the ground next to me. I back away out of reflex. "That's so fucking gross…" I whisper. Then I remember – no time to reflect, I have to act. I have to move. Someone will have heard that gunshot. They'll come to this position, so I need to be elsewhere. Quickly. I run to the front yard. Another infected. He loses both his arms to my rifle, and falls. I perform a quick scan of the area. I don't see any others. Thank goodness. Have to keep moving.

Two more blocks and I'm at the long driveway to the nursing home. Herr Lane looks relatively clear of infected from here. I can spot two. There are only two cars in sight. If I make a mad dash for the subdivision on the opposite side of the road I should be able to get away with fighting only a few infected before I can find a place to lose whoever's left. Yeah… yeah, okay. I'm ready I can do this.

Before I take a step to begin a sprint towards the road, I notice by my feet a metal toolbox. I was about to trip over the damn thing. What on earth is this doing here? I notice my current place of cover is one of those large boxes that house all the brakers and switches or whatever they're called that provide electricity for large buildings. At my feet is a sprawled assortment of tools spilled from the toolbox, along with the corpse of an uninfected man in a uniform for the electric company. I guess he was about to fix something here when the infection hit.

An idea springs to my mind. Why fight infected when I can distract them? Using my free hand, I grab the toolbox and, with all my strength, heave it far away from my intended path across the street. Grabbing my gun again I begin my dash. Either I'm a genius or a fool. I'll find out in a couple seconds.

Those seconds pass, and the toolbox crashes to the ground in a loud clang of metal. The infected hear it (kinda hard not to) and divert all their attention to the cacophony. I, on the other hand, am already on the other side of the street.

I glance back for a split-second. Two are after me. Shit, shit, shit. No... wait. Don't shoot them yet. Get farther into the subdivision. Away from the main road. I keep running. I can hear them behind me. Did they gain a number? I can't tell. No time to look. Need to find a place… find a place to trap them… where…? Yes! Here we go! I run in between two brick houses, where an alley of grass and weeds no more than two meters wide creates the perfect opportunity for me to funnel them together.

In position, I swivel around. 15 bullets left before reloading. More than enough to get the job done. The first one arrives. A woman in business attire with hands caked in dried blood. She gets two shots in her. The second immediately follows, an old man without a shirt on. He gets a bullet to his belly, opening it up for all his infected entrails to spill out. My senses were right. A third had joined them. I didn't even take the time to remember what this one looked like before firing three bullets into them.

Okay… okay… I did this. I did this! Can't stop, though. Can't stop. Have to find a safe place to hide, have to-

I turn around to scurry into the backyards and a young infected man is directly in front of me.

I scream.

How did he get…

His arm is already lifted, to swing at me. In reflex, I put my rifle in front of me to block the attack. His fist connects with the gun and easily knocks it out of my loose grip. I stumble for a just a moment. He's already got the next attack ready. I can see it all. Time is slowing, in the moment. He is covered in dirt and blood. His clothes are torn. His eyes are glowing with an unending amount of rage flowing from their sockets. This is no longer a person. This is no longer even the remnants of what was once a person. This is nothing but a construct, a tool of anger. Anger directed at me… at me… he's going to… at me, kill… me…

I spear him. I don't know if it was from a thought, or an instinct, or what, but I drove my hand straight through his torso. There was no resistance. It was like piercing a tissue, or a bubble. He's dead. Before I can even realize what I've done, he's dead. Leaning over me, nearly sliced in two, the dead creature's blood is flowing out to stain me in red.

Then, I come to my senses. My hand is still in his body. With a fearful shriek, I tear it out from him and scurry away before the body falls onto me. My breathing is jagged and erratic. "I just… I just… his blood on… I… didn't…" I can't form words; my mind is blank, overloaded. I look at my hands. They are soaked with fresh blood, still running down my arms and body. I tear them away from my sight. I can't look at this! Inside… I need to be inside! I grab my rifle and tear towards the nearest house.

The house is devoid of any shambling infected, or even any old corpses. As soon as I'm sure I've lost anything left of the horde outside, I fall to my knees and catch my breath. I can feel my heart threatening to burst from my chest. I sit in a hallway. An open closet reveals a stack of towels. Without thinking, I reach in and tear them from their shelves and scour the blood off my hands and arms. My mind is still a blank thing, operating on its own. I need all of this gone, I can think later. I barely even notice myself cutting my arms in various places in my attempt to get all the greasy red liquid off of me.

Ten minutes later, and I've calmed down… sort of. Why didn't I notice he was there, behind me? I sigh, heavily. I stand up, and get my things ready to continue on towards my current destination. I don't get to rest. Not yet. Not for some time. Before exiting the building, I murmur in the dank darkness of the house "It's because you left me, isn't it?"


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen**

The neighborhood is deathly quiet. The only thing to interrupt the silence is my rifle, the gunshot noises echoing across the houses and trees every time I find an infected person. They are far more sparse than I had expected. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people lived in this part of the suburbia; I should be finding far more people than I am. Between the quick (slightly one-sided) fights with infected, I ponder the reason behind this absence of infected. I tell myself "Don't jinx yourself, you idiot. You'll make more show up!" at one point, but I can't help thinking about it. I can see corpses of uninfected people everywhere, so apparently a large portion of the population must've been immune as those four are, but that still doesn't account for the lacking numbers. I wonder what makes them immune. Something in the blood, perhaps? Lots of corpses of infected as well, that I didn't kill. I've examined a few… from a distance (they're gross, okay?). Almost all of them had fatal wounds, ones I didn't make obviously. A large-scale resistance, perhaps? Hmm. This neighborhood's resident's average age is particularly old, if I remember. Even if infected, people already frail wouldn't be able to do much to assail uninfected… I would think. Maybe the houses themselves are filled with infected wanting to tear me to shreds, but unable to stand up to do so. I laugh to myself. Ah, I shouldn't, though. That's terrible, making fun of people… even if it is funny. Are they still people?

I've come to the conclusion that I can lose an infected if they can't see or hear me, which surprised me at first. I was in quite a bit of a jam just now, having spent a whole round on a large group of infected that spotted me. After my last bullet, there were still two infected remaining. I made a frenzied run for it. I swear I didn't use to be this good of a runner. I used to be sluggish and slow. Some part of the second transformation perhaps? Into what Lorraine called a 'witch'? Anyway, I was making better speed that the two pursuing me. Once I had gotten some distance, I made an act of desperation and jumped into the thin space between a tall shrubbery and the side of a house. At that point, they simply weren't able to find me. I was afraid they might smell me down or something silly like that. Maybe that's only with the uninfected. Thank my lucky stars, there. Thinking back, I'm not quite sure what I would have done had they found me. I'm not stabbing another; that earlier was a totally fluke. It didn't happen.

After taking several minutes to reload my gun, I creep out from behind the shrubbery and scan the area. I can spy Westport Road at a distance. I'm near the Washburn Rd intersection, exactly where I need to be. The park the note said to meet at is past this intersection, further along Washburn, then if I recall correctly, just past the railroad tracks on the right. The intersection itself, however, is a total mess, a maze of car wrecks. And of course, it's filled with infected. Dozens of them swarm the area. They look rather restless, to boot. This… is going to be a problem.

I think the matter over, repeatedly glancing out to look at the situation again. I'm not going to get away as easily as I did at Herr Lane. That was pure dumb luck that I managed to cross that street as I did. What to do, what to do then? I look out onto the street again, planning a possible path to run through the jungle of cars. There are a couple overturned vehicles, one of which, a pick-up truck, must've been hauling pipes, as there are a number of them scattered all around. Must be sure not to slip on one.

Wait. Overturned? I look back out and survey the vehicles that have flipped over. The positioning of one gives me an even crazier, stupider, possibly-brilliant-but-probably-not idea than I had with the toolbox. A car, a Scion I believe, is overturned, the top of the car facing away from me, revealing to me all the mechanics of its underbelly. Its gas tank is right there…

I'm mad. I don't know how many times I've told myself that in the past month, but I have got to be insane by now. Have I given up on life? Is this why I'm willing to try something so unbelievably stupid? Perhaps. I can second-guess myself later.

I'm too far away right now, though. Need to get just a little closer. I scan for a closer hiding spot. Found it, behind a bush fence. With my head low, I make a break for it, staying near objects, not going out into the open. Luckily, when I reach the fence, no one's spotted me.

I glance back out to find my car. I can still see it. Yes, this is close enough. I have to make this count. My aim has to be perfect, more than it ever has been before. I peer over the bush and take aim at the gas tank of the overturned car. I take deep breaths, trying my best to calm my mind and steady my hands. My hands… they're right in front of me. Don't let their disfigure affect you. Don't pay attention to that. Just concentrate, take aim. You can do this.

I fire. A moment of thoughtlessness passes, before I realize I missed. The infected notice. Shit! I fire again. This one, oddly enough, makes its mark.

I've seen explosions all the time on television, or in a movie, but those really don't do justice to the real thing. Especially not the one I just made. Once the dust and noise finally settled down, I was able to come back to my senses (quite literally, my eardrums were blown). When my bullet pierced the gas tank of the Scion, a tremendous explosion followed that threw me to my feet. That was what I expected to happen, but that wasn't the end of it. I had failed to realize that all of those cars, trucks, and what-not jam-packed in with each other had gas in them as well, and were just a volatile. So basically, I created a chain reaction that pretty much destroyed this entire section of Westport Road, and undoubtedly any infected that were lingering around the vehicles. I wanted to laugh. It seemed the perfect thing to do, upon witnessing the destruction I just caused, to laugh like a supervillain who just blew up New York. However, I kept my impulses in check. Stepping out to examine the area, I realize these cars are going to take a while to burn out, so I'm going to be stuck on this side for a bit before I can cross. That's fine with me.

Nothing happens in the hour or so it takes for the street to become clear enough to pass. Walking through the vile-smelling ash and burnt remnants of vehicle and corpse alike, I wonder how many infected this mass explosion caused to lure. I also wonder if they even realized that the fire was a dangerous thing, or if they simply ran in like angry lemmings. Well, if they did, they're certainly scorched to a crisp now.

Back to hiding. I'm past the worst of it; now I just need to make this last stretch to the park. What then? I suppose I'll camp out for a day or two and wait for them. Perhaps, if I'm too late, Ann will have left another note telling me where they've gone. I really hope that doesn't end up being the case, though. This Rambo-business is tough alone. Being with four others would make things much easier.

A small number of infected find me on my way. Most of them at the apartment complex on the other side of the railroad tracks from the park. They don't cause much trouble for me. The rest of the infected I have little trouble in simply hiding from. They aren't as perceptive as I thought they'd be.

When I reach the park itself, I realize something I probably should have earlier: I wish she'd chosen somewhere else to meet. There are dead kids here. Dead kids. This is not amusing. This is, in fact, really fucking disturbing. There are just a couple, but that's enough to shake me up. I steer away from them. The corpses of who I assume were their parents are nearby as well. Well, at least they weren't susceptible to the disease. That would be pretty fucked up for a parent, maddened by the infection, to kill their kids. I'm sure it's probably happened somewhere out there, though. That's not a pleasant thought. Besides the corpses, there's no one else here. I look around and spy the playground. There we go. A place to sit and relax while waiting for the others; I suppose I've earned it.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen**

When you're alone, unable to speak, unable to move from where you are, unable to do much at all for a period of time, the world begins to change. More accurately, your perception of the world begins to change. Your senses, bored with the lack of new stimuli, become more perceptive, more sensitive. You are slowly able to distinguish between various sounds that you would never have thought were different; droplets of dew falling upon grass is an entirely different music than drops falling on dirt. Your eyes are ready to spot the slightest change in the environment around you. A single yellow leaf falling from a poplar tree is noted and recorded. Your confines become an array of dozens of different textures, the simple wooden floor is dotted with the slightly softer feel of sparse molds that have clung to its surface for who knows how many years. You observe all of this, but even then all of it eventually dulls into repetition, your mind craving more. So perceptions are fabricated to satisfy the hunger. In your peripheral vision, a blurry figure is running across the field. You swear you feel a raindrop fall on your brow. Your mother's voice dances in your ear; she's calling your name because you left a mess in the kitchen making lunch.

Another drop of water hits my forehead. Then, a third on my arm. I look up. A thin gray cloud floats overhead. Okay, perhaps I wasn't imagining _everything_. I relocate myself to the playground's highest point, just in front of the top of the plastic spiral slide, where there is a wooden roof built to look like some sort of tower, or perhaps a gazebo. The rain grows into a light drizzle, the kind that produces a mist that loves to cling to cheeks. I have foggy, enshrouded memories of this place. I remember coming here at least once before, long ago. I must have been somewhere around nine or ten years old, because I can remember feeling too old to play on a playground, but I really wanted to anyway. I think everyone goes through a similar feeling. I was sitting in this spot I believe. I ran up to the top of the slide, but rethought going down it because, even at that age I knew I'd gain static electricity going down and get shocked if I touched one of those thick metal screws holding the thing up. I peek down the slide to see if those devilish little fuckers are still there.

I look off into the distance, onto the playground and the rest of the small park. The scene pulls a memory into my mind of another time when I was young. It wasn't this exact one, it was some other park in which I remember very distinctly running away for a bit from my mother. I believe it was Tyler Park… yes, the one with the street bridge going over it. All I did was leave the park and take a walk around an adjacent city block, but it felt fantastic; to be free! Just to have the choice, should I want, to leave and never look back. Oh, I so wish I could do that right now. I so wish there was somewhere I could run to, to put all of this behind me and never look at it again. I would be there as fast as my legs could take me.

But just as I knew long ago that I had to come back to my mother, I know now that I have to come back to reality. But unlike the me many years ago, that keeping me bound to a stupid park is far more constricting than the threatening glare of my mother. Sure, something could've happened to me in that simple walk around a block, some crazy pedophile kidnapper could've snatched me up and the world would find my face on the 6 o'clock news two months later when they found the body, but the chances of that happening were about as probable as Louisville actually getting a professional sports team. Today, right now, though? The city's a whole lot meaner right now than it was twelve years ago. To be honest, there's really nothing keeping an angry horde of infected from leading an all-out assault on me other than that they simply don't know where I am and have the collective intelligence of a slime mold. This isn't some kind of saferoom I'm hiding in, it's a damn playground made of wood and plastic.

The rain is coming down just the tiniest increment harder, but my anxious senses notice it. It's still nothing to speak of, really. I could probably travel through it, if I hadn't thought up some problems with that scenario. First off, without the aid of modern medicine, a simple cold from standing in the rain could evolve into something much worse in little time. Second, I really have no idea how much my physiology has been changed from this infection. For all I know a sneeze could be fatal. It's worrying, and it makes me paranoid about things, but that paranoia is probably the only reason I'm still alive. Or perhaps it's the reason behind my downfalls as well. Who knows.

"Paranoia"… I can't help but notice I've gained some control over my own. When I was walking back from the incident at the mall, under that terrible attack of depression, my paranoia had a chokehold over me, subjecting me to constant fear. Was it just me, though? Was what my brain telling me really _from _my brain? It didn't seem like a thought of my own; it was like a voice almost, something tangible and noisy being implanted into my conscious. Whatever was happening, it's long since stopped, so one would think I'd just forget all about it, but it's because it just… _stopped_, so suddenly, that I can't help but ponder over it.

Too much thinking. My brain needs a rest. I think… whether I like it or not… I'm falling asleep…

I'm inside a building. A cold, gray, dead room inside some kind of building. The walls are concrete, barren, chipped in places. I can see no windows or doors. The air in the room is thick, not with smog or dust, but with the dream-like quality of simply being unable to see through. It's as if I'm looking into the distortions of light caused by immense heat, but the room is cold.

Wait, temperature. I can feel it. I can feel the lack of heat. Why can I…? No matter. I have to see through this, know where I am. I have a body, and I can move, but I cannot see myself. It is as if I am merely a sentient point of view, floating about this eerie building. As I move through the room, the thickness in the air stays a distance from me, as though I intimidate it. It hisses and growls at me. I pay no mind to its anger.

"Do you remember us?" a voice, perhaps a thought, says. I look back and forth, but see nothing to attach the sentence to.

I don't respond. I don't know if I can't, or simply don't want to, but the room's atmosphere returns to a perturbed silence. How long I can't say, as time holds little meaning in dreams.

It speaks again. "We remember you. We remember when we first saw you. You were so frightened." There is a pause in which nothing happens. "Are you still?"

I don't think about my answer. It comes naturally. "No." I have no voice. I say it in my thoughts. Did my company hear me? Do I care? There is another pause in the room, where all things seem to have been sucked away, leaving a lifeless vacuum in between words.

"You should be. We mean to kill you."


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen**

I wake up. It is not a natural awakening. There is noise in the distance, a formless blob of sound coming from the east. The sound of a gunshot here and there. I scramble to my feet and peer into the distance. Even with the afternoon sun at my back I see nothing out of place. Then, I remember the binoculars left to me. Set my gun down for a moment, I reach into my pack and carefully remove them.

"Darn. I still can't see anything." I mumble, my eyes stuck to the lenses of the binoculars. I scan the area multiple times. It is not for another minute or two that I see, in the distance, Jim running madly in my direction. "Shit, it's them!" I exclaim, putting the binoculars back into my bag and grabbing my gun. He was running from infected, no doubt about it. With rifle in hand I look again at where I spotted him. I see Ann and Greg with him as well. A gaggle of infected are hot on their trail. They turn back every few seconds to fire at the mob, then continue their sprint.

This is no time for a reintroduction. "Hey, don't worry! I've got your back!" I shout. I can tell they've noticed me, though I'm not sure if they're aware that it's the creepy little witch from yesterday shouting at them. The infected heard me as well. For a moment I ponder whether I should have just let them know where I was like that, but quickly mentally slapped myself across the cheek for thinking such a selfish thing. "All right, you sons of bitches. Come on!" Still at my vantage point at the top of the playground, I steady my hands, take aim and fire into the crowd of infected. One goes down. I'm getting better at this, I tell myself.

I continue firing until my allies are almost at the playground. Then, I hear a noise I had not heard before. It was a roar. At least I think "roar" is the right word for it. It sounded like some kind of animal, a donkey or some large hoofed animal, someone's bad impression of a very large donkey animal. Regardless, it sounded very angry. I quickly found the origin. While the infected had thinned out to only ten or so, among them trampled in a very large, very frightening creature. This is an infected, right? It must be, it still has a pair of overalls on. The giant infected stands at least six feet tall, maybe even seven, and is just as monstrously large in frame as it is in height. One arm is gigantic; it composes at least half of the infected's body, and looks almost as though it were made of rocks, while the other arm is tiny and decrepit, dangling pathetically as the creature runs.

I hear one of the men, Greg I think, fearfully shout "What the hell is that thing!" They can't shoot it just yet; there are still normal infected in their line of sight. That thing's going to be able to get right up next to them and punch the shit out of them with that massive arm of its. I have to kill it. I have to! I take aim and fire I barrage of bullets into the thing. One or two pierce its chest, but then it quickly shields itself with its hulking arm, and the remainder of the bullets are deflected. This isn't good. It doesn't even seem fazed, and I just spent the last of that round! I curse under my breath and eject the magazine. The creature bellows again. I instinctively look towards it, pausing. It leans forward and begins a vicious charge at the playground.

Someone shouts "Look out!", but it's in vain. The monstrous infected barrels straight through the playground, knocking the entire thing over, shattering the wood into splinters and warping the playground, all with a deafening crash. I am sent skidding across the grass field and straight into a nearby seesaw. The butt of my rifle jabs me in the gut as I fall, and something cuts my elbow.

For a moment, my head is spinning and I can't tell what on Earth just happened. The world takes a moment to align itself. I can hear gunshots and shouts, noises of battle. I try to get to my feet, but I'm dizzy, my balance is entirely gone. Just as my sight is reconfigured I see the giant infected fall to the ground, finally dying from its wounds. For a moment, the park is enveloped in an eerie silence, all of us holding our breath in case the mayhem will still continue.

It does not. The assault is over. We all breathe a sigh of relief. The rush of adrenaline fades, and I can feel the delayed pain of the battle creep into me. My stomach hurts, and my arm stings terribly.

Before I can check for wounds, a voice interrupts me "Oh, you've gotta be shittin' me." it says. It is Ann. She approaches me, a smoking shotgun in her hands.

"Please don't tell me there are more of them!" I hear Jim complain from the other side of the remnants of the playground.

"You could say that. Come see who our little ally is." Ann replies. As the other two make their way to us, Ann says with a slight growl in her voice "Just what the hell are you doing out here?"

I'm stunned. I was expecting a warm welcome from her, what is this all about? "What am I doing out here? What do you mean?"

Jim and Greg spot me. "Is that Maggie? Did you follow us here?" Jim asks.

"Follow? No, I… your note! I just came where your note said to come, Ann!"

She arches an eyebrow and shifts her weight from one leg to the other. "My note? What the hell are you talking about?"

"The note! 'Couldn't convince the others. If you still want to come, meet us at Warwick Park'!" I recite from memory. There is a long pause. "That… was you who wrote it, right? It didn't look like a man's handwriting, so I-"

"It was Lorraine." Ann answered. "Look, Maggie… don't take this the wrong way, please. We just… we couldn't have you with us. It just wasn't going to work out. Lorraine, she defended you, but she was alone- I mean… how do I say this? She-"

"Wait." I stop her mid-sentence. I want to shout at them. I want to scream and yell at them in blind anger, but not only do I realize that would be an extremely lethal thing to do right now, I have to ask them: "Where is she? Where is Lorraine?"

They don't say a thing. Ann and Jim both turn their glances down to the ground, away from me. At his grandmother's name, Greg looks completely shattered. Oh, don't tell me…

"She's not here, is she? I haven't seen her since-" I repeat.

"She's dead." Says Jim, solemnly, without emotion.

I take a step back. "Dead? Her? How?"

Jim takes a seat on a picnic bench that survived the battle. "We said something to the effect of "We must be immune", right?" He paused. I swallowed a lump in my throat. I get the feeling I already know what he's going to say. "Well, we were wrong. Lorraine wasn't immune. Now she's dead, because we killed her."

I was in shock. "But… there's no way! Th-there's no way that could happen!"

"Well apparently there was, okay?" Jim shouted.

I feel the unmistakable feeling of a sorrow with missing tears. "But… but you all made it so far! How could someone not immune avoid the infection that long?" Jim doesn't respond, instead only pulling out a cigarette from a pocket and lighting it.

"If anyone could, it was that old girl." Says Ann. "C'mon. We've spent too much time here, we've got to find a safe place to hide for the night." She says to the others. Jim tells her he already knows that, while Greg is silent. "Hey, Greg. C'mon kid, you'll pull through this."

I come to my senses and start to gather my things. Jim notices. "Maggie, don't follow us again, please. I'm sorry, but you can't come with us."

I ignore him. "Not happening. You're stuck with me whether you like it or not."

Ann groans. "Look, that's real cute, but-"

"No, YOU look. You made me think you were going to convince everyone to let me come along, and you didn't. Not only that, but the four of you left without saying a single word to me. You lied to me, and you OWE me for it. I made up my mind when I left my house that I was not coming back, and not a damn thing you say is going to make me return. Do you understand?"

They stand astounded. Damn, it felt good to get that off my chest. None of them say a word, merely readying themselves to continue on their trek; I can tell they're not going to argue with me.

After a moment, Ann speaks up. "Our plan of action is to follow the railroad tracks. They eventually lead south, to the forested area north of Fort Knox. Grab your things, I wasn't kidding when I said we need to find a place before dark."


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty**

As soon as the four of us continued on, there was no time to say anything more than "Over here!" or "Reloading!" I thought I had gone through a rough time on my way to the park, but the (very) short run from the playground, along the railroad tracks to the back entrance of a newly remodeled retail superstore made my previous ordeal look like a Sunday stroll. It was only a little more than a mile, or so said Jim, but it was a brutal mile. These three acted like a magnet for infected. Infected came from damn near anywhere they could. From the emptied trailers of semis, out of dumpsters, off the roofs of houses… Jim swore he saw one pop out of an open manhole. I'm not even going to ponder how he managed that. Obviously, staying alive was no longer a matter of staying hidden; it was a matter of shooting every single infected you saw… minus me.

The path today was, at least, easy to spot incoming infected from. The railroad track led between two subdivisions; wooden and chain link fences made two borders on either sides several yards from the tracks. Any infected that wanted to come at us that weren't already in this 10-meter gauntlet had to first climb over the fence, making for easy targets.

Ann, Jim and Greg had several advantages over me. First of all, they had been doing this kind of thing for much longer than I had. Second of all, reloading my weapon was a tricky, lengthy ordeal for me. I ruined one ammo pack by accidentally slicing a huge notch through the thing with two fingers. I'm lucky the thing didn't explode on me. Thirdly, and lastly, they had much better weapons than I. Ann's shotgun was tearing infected to shreds, and fired quickly (a "repeating shotgun", I think it's called?), while Greg and Jim both had automatic rifles that must've held at least 50 bullets to each round. Meanwhile, my Mini-14, while getting the job done, seemed extremely puny. I suppose its accuracy was nice, but as mentioned, I'm barely knowledgeable in firearms at all.

On the opposite hand, I didn't think about it as we were running through the swarms of infected eager to rip us apart, as I simply had to devote the mental energy elsewhere, but I think I may have been hindering my companions as well. When we ran into the back of the giant retail building, flew into a storage room, and barricaded the doors with anything we could find, I found I was suddenly able to think again. It was then that I came to realize what a pain I probably was. The first thing I said was "How the hell do you people do this every day?", though.

No one replied. They were all too tired. As was I.

As I still am now, though it's been at least a half hour since we reached this safe room. I had thought in that time "I'm probably a terrible distraction to these three. Or at least another obstacle." Not only do they have to kill every infected, but there's one among the crowd you can't shoot! That has to be troublesome. I didn't even realize at the time that my life could have been ended not by a raging infected, but by a misdirected bullet from one of my allies.

I should say something about it to them. But before I can summon up the courage to do so, Ann speaks up. "We shouldn't stay here long. Best to use the nighttime to travel while we can."

I completely forget what I was going to ask her. Travel by night? Is she nuts? "By night? Wouldn't it be better to do it by day, when you can see?"

"There was writing on the wall of that Qdoba at Westport Village. Someone telling others about the witches, your little friends."

"Please." I said, in disgust.

Ann ignored me. "It said you girls walk around, wander, travel places, but only during the day. At night you stay put. We already fought one of you, if there's _any_ way for us to bypass that happening again we're taking it." She paused, and lifted up her shotgun. "Besides, our guns have halogen flashlights on them. We can see just fine." To illustrate her point, she turned hers on. The previously dim-lit room was now a lit with a blaze of fiery white light. Instantly I shut my eyes tight and turned my head to bury it against a wall. I heard her curse and immediately the red glow of light shining through my eyelids faded away. My head was still a pounding mess of pain; my eyes were still closed until the throbbing went away.

I think at this point the realization that they were travelling with a malformed infected girl fully came back to them, as it did to me, and I suddenly remembered what it was I was going to ask them.

Again however, someone else spoke before I could get my head back together in order to say anything. "This is why we left her, and we should've left her again." It was Greg. His voice did not sound anything like the kid's I remember from a few days ago. Come to think of it, since we rejoined at the playground, I haven't heard him say a single word until just now. There is something… new in his voice. I can't tell if it's anger, or sadness, or fear, or something completely different, perhaps something I can't even imagine, but there is one thing that is painfully certain: this is not the same boy who cheerfully offered to wipe tomato off my nose. Was the death of his grandmother that much of an impact on him? I don't mean to downplay the tragedy of the event at all, but wasn't he in the same boat as I was in regards to his parents? Hadn't he practically… well… lost them, too?

Ann replies. "She's an extra gun, Greg, you know we need that. Three just isn't enough, that's what…" she stammers "that's what Lorraine told us. Four is the best number."

"Fat load of good that did." I hear Greg growl under his breath.

Ann winced. "Greg… look, I know this is tough shit we got ourselves into. Nobody should have to go through what you did. Nobody should ever have to…" she swallowed a lump in her throat "…to have to kill their own family, but-"

Greg denied her attempt at comforting. "Kill her? Kill her? Ann, we didn't kill her! Yeah, you're right – someone you love turning into a fucking zombie and then you being forced to kill her before she kills you – you're right. That's 'tough shit'. That's exactly what Lorraine taught us before we set out. That this shit may happen, and we won't have a choice. I was ready for that, Ann, I was fucking ready for that! But then you go along and bring the culprit along with us? THAT'S what I cannot accept!"

"The culprit…?" Ann gasped. Even Jim, alone in a corner with his cigarette, ignoring most of everything being said until now, looks up and becomes attentive.

I stand up in defiance. "What? What are you saying?"

Greg looks me straight in the eyes. I step back. For the first time since the infection struck, this person is looking straight at me without a single ounce of fear in his eyes. Replacing it is a terrible anger, completely different from the mindless rage of the infected; this is real, controlled. "I mean what I said. How have you all not noticed it until now?" He pauses for a moment. "She's the one who infected my grandmother!"

I am in shock. That had never occurred to me – the thought of me still being a carrier for this terrible disease. It makes perfect sense, though. I'm infected, therefore I can still pass it on to others. But then, that would mean… that he's right… and I… I actually…

"Hold on, hold on!" Ann retorts, then thinks for just a brief moment. "That's some serious shit to say, Greg. How can you prove that?"

"Did you see her get cut? Attacked? Ever? I didn't! Zombies got close, but I never saw her suffer a wound; I know we never bandaged one, that's for sure!"

Jim stands up, rubbing his cigarette out against the concrete floor. Even in the middle of this heated argument, he looks calm and collected. They said he was royally freaking out when he told them about the news report; I can't imagine him looking like that. "Alright, look you two," He glances me, up against a wall, fearful. "…er, three… I'm gonna have to play the mediator here and say we need to drop this for now." Greg opens his mouth to say something, but Jim cuts him off. "Now, I'm not saying we should drop it altogether. Far from it, Ann's right Greg, that is some serious shit" the curse word sounded strange coming from his lips, as though he really didn't want to speak the word "you're accusing her, um… ah… sorry, what's your name again?"

"M-Maggie." I stutter. It took me a moment to think, being not my real name.

"Maggie, right. We don't know what happened, and right now we have bigger things to worry about, namely surviving another day. So, Ann, if you'd please, you were saying something about not staying here too long."

Ann blanks out for a moment or two before recollecting her thoughts and going back in her train of thought to a couple minutes ago. "R-Right. I uh… well now that I think about it I suppose it wouldn't really be a good idea to move by night. Because, well you know…" Her glance turned towards me, and our eyes met for a moment before she turned away. Whether it was out of fright, embarrassment, or what, I have no idea.

There was a long, empty silence. In it, each of us retreated to a different corner of the storage room. When the light of day had fully crept away, I said four words.

"Leave at dawn, then?"

Ann and Jim nodded their heads. Greg was already asleep.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One**

It's the next day, and we're preparing to run for our lives again. While the others look as though they wish to forget the confrontation last night, in my mind it still haunts me terribly. A terrible spectre of murder hangs over my head. Was I, in fact, the one responsible for Lorraine's death? I suppose there's no way we would ever be certain, and that's partially what's bothering me. I want to know, I feel as though I _need_ to know, or the question will haunt me forever. I want to investigate this, if only to hopefully clear me of any guilt. However, right now we are far too preoccupied to hold any conversation aside from the extremely simple. At the very least, I don't have to worry about infecting any of the other three – they've all drawn blood on this treacherous journey of theirs, with nothing happening as a consequence of it other than pain.

"There's a gun shop over on Lexington, if I recall." Says Jim. I get the feeling the others already know this, that they had planned this stop long before, and he was only restating it, as a sort of mission briefing for the day. "We can resupply there. Would make for a good spot to stop as well, for the night, if we need to."

And so we entered, into the cityscape arena. An onslaught of infected was ready to greet us only a couple minutes in. It took every bit of concentration I had to keep my actions calm and precise enough to actually be of some help in the fray. My adrenaline was pumping relentlessly, to the point where it physically had worn me out after periods of time. The other three, though much more skilled in combat than I, fell prey to brief bouts of exhaustion as well. Greg and I tended to tire out first; Ann and Jim lasted longer. It's odd if you ask me, where's our supposed youthful energy at?

At the moment we're stopped for just a moment, ten minutes or so, inside a karate studio. Thank goodness the infected that we had to clear out from it first didn't remember their martial training from their previous life. That would have been something I do not want to tangle with.

One of the walls is a mirror. I suppose that was so the students could see themselves as they were practicing moves, or something. For me, it means I keep looking at my ugly mug, when I'd really prefer not to. I've told myself a couple of times that I'll simply have to get used to it, but there's this little nagging glimmer of hope in a decrepit corner of my mind that keeps wanting me to know that there might be a cure yet! The logical thinker in me thinks perhaps for normal infected there will be, but not in the special cases like mine. I mean, I don't even look my old self; what would I revert back into?

Greg notices my reluctance to glance towards the mirror wall. "You're a zombie, not a vampire. The mirror's not gonna burn you to cinders." I hear him grumble while I'm in the middle of counting my remaining ammo. I turn to him, about to say something, but only a sigh escapes. His demeanor may not be filled with the fervorous anger he assaulted me with the previous night, but he still holds the mien of one who is full of vengeance just waiting to be unleashed. He also bears the look of one who has just transcended some sort of life barrier. Undoubtedly, the events of the past several weeks have hardened him, but I would not be surprised if the death of his grandmother was the final catalyst in the equation to transform this boy into a man. I suppose I should start calling him one then, instead of just a "kid". Relations between the two of us might even resolidify, if only slightly.

I set down my bag full of ammo and stand up. I catch the attention of all but Jim for a moment. I walk towards the mirrored wall, and the identical infected girl on the other side walks towards me in greeting. Wow, they were right. My eyes do glow a very evil red. Every other time I saw my reflection, it was in nighttime so I simply saw them in the same color as everything else. As I reach the mirror I can get a clear view of myself. My hair is a mess of tangles and dirt. I've got spots of caked and blood on my face I hadn't even noticed.

I sigh again. "I'm hideous, in case you hadn't noticed." I look towards Greg's reflection in the mirror. "Would want to look at yourself if you were transfigured like this?" He doesn't respond, and only returns to checking his equipment, or something.

I return my gaze to in front of me, at my own reflection. I have an idea. "Ann?" I call out. "Or anybody I suppose. Could someone do me a favor?"

"Perhaps." Ann responds. "Is it quick? Cause we gotta go."

I spy her through her reflection, standing up with shotgun in hand, ready to head out and return to the front lines. "Could you c'mere for a moment?" She walks towards me, not completely devoid of nervous hesitation, but nearly. "My hair's been getting in the way. Could you hold it back while I cut it?"

"You can't do this yourself?"

"You said we're short on time."

"I did." She sets down her shotgun, and approaches me.

I had nearly forgotten the sensation of human contact. It's been so long; it had become an alien thing to me. I lean my head back slightly, and she (with great apprehension; I'm sure touching an infected is unsettling) gathers my hair together. "Zombies ain't supposed to have hair this nice." I hear her mumble.

I ignore her remark. "Yeah, just hold it like that. Watch your hand. I promise I won't get you." She holds the strands by their ends and takes a step back. I lean my head forward, look in the mirror, and with one clean movement of my index finger, cut through. Instantly my head feels just a bit lighter from the excess weight missing. I look back in the mirror. My bangs are no more than chin length, and no other part of my hair is longer than that. It's slightly liberating, as though I just shed some kind of emotional metaphor along with the locks.

"Ah, much better." I say to my reflection, and turn around to face Ann. We look each other in the eyes, and she freezes. At least I think she does. She has a blank expression on her face, still holding the gray strands of hair in her hand.

"You… alright? I don't think it looks that bad…"

She snaps out of it. "N-No! No! It's- No, it's not at all, it's great- Sorry, ignore me."

I shrug. Jim walks up to us. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take those." He grabs the leftover hair from Ann's hand and ties it up with some rubber bands he nabbed from the karate dojo's reception desk, and stuffs it in a pocket.

"Okay, that's not creepy at all, Jim." Greg says, sarcastically.

"Hey, for all we know, the cure could come out of this. I'm saving everything suspicious that I can."

"What, because it's infected hair?" I ask.

"Because you're the only zombie that's retained a mind, that's why." Jim responds.

I return to my bag of ammo and my rifle, and ready up to head back out with the three of them. "You all keep using 'zombie'. So I'm a zombie now?" I say while slinging my bag over my shoulder.

"You have a better word?" Says Jim.

"Well, zombies imply that they're undead. You know, like… they died and came back to life? Last time I checked, I never di-" I grind my sentence to a halt and gasp. "Wait, I blacked out once or twice. Did I die then? Are you telling me I died!" I had not thought of this possibility at all. I'm not quite sure how it would change my situation, though.

"No, no, no. You didn't die. At least I don't think so." I breathe a sigh of relief. "From what we've seen, they're not those kind of zombies. They're like… ah, what was that movie that came out a few years ago? The zombie film set in England?"

"Oh. You mean _28 Days Later_."

"That's it. They were just infected with something, and they ran fast as well. Eerie how accurate to the real things they were."

"Yeah… but, I wouldn't call those zombies. I dunno, I'm kind of a purist when it comes to zombie flicks. You know, George Romero, _Night of the Living Dead_? Can't say I really liked Boyle's zombies."

"How can you not like that movie?" Greg pipes in. Guess he overheard us.

I shrug again, and sigh. "I always get flak every time I mention that. I just didn't like it. Didn't even bother seeing the sequel."

Greg mumbles something under his breath before the four of us ready ourselves to return to the outdoors and try and make it to the gun shop by sunset. Just as we step through the doors into the midday sun, I realize I may have just made a new reason for the guy to hate me.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

Why is it so quiet out here? Exiting the karate dojo, we did not stumble upon a ghost town devoid of any movement, but the infected we're encountering are far sparser than before. It's eerie. All of us are feeling anxious; we were all ready for another relentless onslaught, and yet here we are barely breaking a sweat. I suppose I shouldn't complain, anything raising our chances of surviving another day is a good thing. Still, I can't help but comment on it. "This is rather… tame." I remark in between infected.

Jim shoots one from a distance, the sound of gunfire briefly echoing across the trees and buildings, small stores and houses surrounding them. "Don't let it lower your guard, though."

"I know, I know."

"Remember that big fucker that attacked us at the playground?" Says Ann. How could I not? It's hard to forget being thrown 30 something feet across a field. I glance at the cut on my arm from the fall. I hadn't thought to bandage it at the time, but it's healing just fine. "The normal infected cleared out just before he showed up. They also began to vanish around the times when we came across those witches."

I take aim, steady my hands, and shoot an infected that's taking its time climbing over a chain link fence. That's thirteen bullets left in this round, I tell myself before responding to the conversation at hand. "So, you think the normal infected tend to stay away from an area that a special kind is hanging around?"

"Something like that." Jim says. "No offense, but you don't seem to have the same effect." Another infected slain by his rifle. We decided it would be best if, while we can manage such a tactic, to have two people doing most of the firing while the other two conserved their amno, until the first two ran out, and then the two teams switch places. That way, if any sudden, unforeseen situation should arrive, there isn't a chance everyone will be caught with their pants down, out of bullets and out of luck.

"None taken." I respond. In fact, I think I'll take it as a compliment. "That special infected at the park, had you all seen one of them before?"

"No, we hadn't." replies Jim.

I pause to expend a number of bullets on a tiny group of infected spilling out of a tennis court, two women and a man. All three are in rather short shorts; one of them even has a little visor. If I wasn't so focused on killing them I might have a laugh about it. "So I guess you all didn't have a name for it then, huh?"

Jim gives Greg the signal to take his place as he fires the last of his round. "Does he need one? He is dead, after all."

I shrug my shoulders and squint off into the distance. I swear I just saw something move across the railroad tracks far ahead. "Well we might see another one, you never know. Whatever."

"'Charger' then." chimes Ann. "You know, like the San Diego Chargers?" The rest of us held no comment. "You know, the football team? He was pretty big, and… I'm the only one who watched NFL, huh?" I can't help but start to giggle. I try to hold it in though; this is no time for silly shenanigans. "Oh shut up! He charged at us, it makes sense! Don't laugh!" Well now that you said not to I don't have a choice. There wasn't even that much funny about it, but I burst into laughter regardless, and that makes Jim in turn start to chuckle. Before we know it the three of us are all in a mad laugh for no real reason at all. Even Greg cracks the tiniest of smiles, though he tries his best to hide it.

A shrill, high-pitched scream tears through the afternoon sky, stopping our laughter dead in its tracks. The four of us all instinctively hold our guns up in defense. I fumble with mine for a moment.

"What the hell was that?" shouts Greg. No one responds, but I can tell we're all wondering the same thing. The scream was terrible, like something you'd hear in an insane asylum or a horror movie. Hearing it felt like it was penetrating you straight to your very heart, chilling you with fright from the inside out. None of us can figure out from where the noise came from, the echoes all around us are masking its point of origin.

A blur appears in my peripheral. Across the train tracks something ran… or did it… fly? Was it on the ground? I couldn't quite tell. I glance towards my companions. Ann and Jim are peering off the opposite way. Wait, where's Greg? I turn back to where I saw the blur, and Greg is running off that direction, without a word to the rest of us. What the hell is he doing? I immediately give chase. "Greg! Hold up!" I shout. He doesn't look back at me. I don't care if he doesn't want to be around me right now, this is not the time to run off alone!

I hear him scoff. "I saw an infected leap into that storage facility!" he shouts back.

"So what? Leave it be if it's not bothering us!" I pause for a moment. "Wait, leap?" I say to myself. I don't think to look back to see if the other two are right behind us or not. Greg is out of my sight for just a moment, as he turns the corner into the facility, past the wreckage of a few vehicles stuck in the gate. I follow as fast as my legs will take me. Another terrible, high-pitched scream rings out, and makes my jump in my skin. Two gunshots immediately follow. Three. Four- no, five! I reach the facility. Greg is standing in the middle of a crossroads, looking bewildered. We spot each other at the same time, and he immediately turns his rifle to face me.

"Don't shoot, it's me!" I exclaim as quick as I get the words out. With a growl, he moves his gun away and starts scanning the skies again.

"It's leaping around the place! It's too fast, I can't get a shot at it!" Greg yells. I turn my gaze upwards. I wish he'd tell me what it looks like, a little more or something.

Another scream, this time clearly from behind. It startles me, but I turn around to see a figure, a shadow against the sun's rays. Greg sees it too. He's running after the thing. Is he trying to intercept it? Will that even work? I follow him. The infected is running across the rooftops. He's right, it is too fast, far too fast for me to get a clear shot at. That doesn't stop Greg from firing off a few shots. I can vaguely make out the infected's figure. He's clothed from head to toe, and he runs with a sort of athletic hunch. Why isn't he coming straight at us? What's he doing? Is this one smarter than the others?

"You don't think he's leading us somewhere do you?" I shout. "Like, a trap or something?" Just then, the infected lets loose his chilling scream once more, and leaps off of the rooftop to land on the path just before Greg. All I can hear before Greg's gun begins to fire away is an angry "Gotcha, you mother-!"

His bullets are in vain. The infected immediately leaps back into the air and onto the door to a storage area, then leaps off of that back onto the rooftops. The infected is so fast it's amazing Greg can follow his movements at all, even if he hasn't a chance at hitting the thing. It's almost as if the infected is toying with him, like a hunter with its prey, waiting for-

Click. Greg's rifle runs out of ammo. Oh shit… I get it now.

"Greg, watch out!" I scream. The infected leaps once more and lands only a few feet away from Greg, who is stammering, desperately trying to find another magazine.

Now… now! I tell myself, shoot it! The infected and Greg are a distance away, but I can still shoot, I can still hit it! I take aim, and fire. I miss. The infected takes notice. Did it not notice me before, or something? No way. It leaps again into the air. I try my best to judge where he's going to land and fire there. I still miss.

Damn it! The infected's going to do the same damn thing with me, isn't it? I fire again, but continue to miss. C'mon Greg, finish reloading already!

Click. I'm out now.

Another scream. This one chills me down to the bone. It's won, hasn't it?

The infected begins a mad dash directly towards Greg. My fears are realized; Greg still hasn't reloaded his damn gun! Shit, what do I do? There's no way I can reload mine in time; it takes me forever! Greg looks even more freaked out than I am.

The infected makes a mighty jump into the air, and pounces directly on Greg.

This time, the scream is not of a maddened infected, but of my ally. What do I do! I repeat in my head. My mind is so alight with thoughts, worries, fears, that in just a split second…

What do I do? I repeat in my head. I have to do something! He's going to die if I don't! I need to run, not away… I need to run at it! I need to attack it!

The split-second of rapid thought ends and I begin my charge. Like an ancient warrior I let loose a furious yell, full of both anger and fright. The infected is on top of Greg, pinning him to the ground, slashing at him with sharp clawed hands, Greg is trying his best to break free, but to no avail. This is it! Strike it! Kill it! Approaching the infected man, I lift my rifle high, and with all the strength I can muster, bring the butt end crashing down upon the back of its head.

The infected is knocked off of my companion, but it is not dead. It rolls along the ground for a bit, staggers, but quickly assumes an animalistic crouching position on all fours, and snarls angrily at me. For a couple seconds, the two of us stare each other down, analyzing the situation, until the infected releases another scream, and leaps off into the distance.

Please leave. For the love of… just get out of here and never come-

POW.

From the storage facility's entrance a loud gunshot booms across the air. In mid-jump, the infected man falls to the ground like a bird just shot of the sky.

"Heeeey." Comes the voice of an annoyed Jim. "Where are you two?"

A smile comes to my face. Thank goodness you showed up when you did. "Over here. Hurry! Greg's injured!"

"I'm fine." I hear Greg's voice grumble from below. "I'm not- hnnngh!" He groans in pain.

I could deliver the expected line and continue the cliché conversation with him, but I decide I really don't want to argue with this kid right now.


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-three**

While Jim is busy bandaging Greg's wounds, Ann and I walk to where the infected must have fallen, to quickly make sure it's dead.

We find it slumped in a ragdoll position against a wall, dead as dead can be. Ann motions to return to the others, but I want to get a closer look, for just a moment. I can't help shake this gnawing feeling that… Is this guy the same…? The infected was a man, not too tall and not too short, but rather fit. He's wearing a dark grey hoodie that hangs heavy over his face, and dirty brown pants. Bands of thick tape are wrapped around each of his limbs. Like parkour, right? Was there ever a parkour scene in Louisville? The infected's clawed hands are red with fresh blood splatters undoubtedly from Greg. Jeez, I hope the guy's gonna be alright.

"How weird." I say out loud. "I think I saw this same guy before, only a day after I first woke up infected. They weren't attacking me then obviously."

"Yeah, weird." Ann mumbles. She sounds uninterested. "You done here?"

"Just one more thing…" I draw in uncomfortably close to the dead, mutated infected man. With the end of one finger I carefully lift the front of his hood to see the rest of his face. I want to see his eyes… but upon the sight, I shriek and back away.

"What? What is it?" says Ann, startled.

"N-Nothing! Nothing! Let's just go!" I lead the way back to the men in a hurry. I don't care if she or anyone else asks; I am never telling what I just saw there.

Fortunately for Greg, the rest of the trek to the gun store Jim spoke of is free enough of infected that the three of us who are not injured take care of what comes our way with little issue. We arrive at the store to find all the windows smashed and at least half the store looted. No one is surprised. After quickly restocking our ammunition, we head upstairs to find a vacant apartment void of any furniture or appliances. Without saying anything to the others, we unanimously decide to stay here for the night. Jim offers the possibility of staying two, in order to let Greg's wounds heal some before heading out again. Neither Greg nor Ann say anything, so I take it upon myself to give a response. "Perhaps."

Later that night, our group of four is split among the rooms by gender, Jim and Greg in one room and Ann and I in the other. The moon is shining violently through our window, and keeping us awake. Apparently it's also slightly cold, but I certainly can't tell. Neither of us can sleep. "Hey." I see if I can open up a conversation. "You think Greg'll be alright?"

Ann groans for a moment before responding. I hope she wasn't actually about to doze off. "What, physically?"

"Yeah – well, no actually. I mean mentally. Emotionally. The kid's going through way too much. Way more than any of us are."

Out of the corner of my peripheral, I spy Ann sitting up and turning my way. "I'm surprised to hear you, of all people, say that."

"Hmm. I suppose I've gotten over my deal somewhat."

"I was thinking more of the fact that he believes you Lorraine's murderer."

"Oh."

Neither of us speak for a moment.

"You're right though." Says Ann. "He is going through way too much. I don't think he'll be able to handle it either." She lies back down. "That night, when he accused you, did you see his eyes?"

I'm not sure what she's getting at. "Well… yeah. Of course I did. I honestly can't say I've ever seen someone look at me with such… malice. It was frightening, to say the least. For once it wasn't me scaring someone else, but the opposite."

Ann sighs. "That isn't what I saw. I saw him at the end of his ropes. I saw a kid becoming an adult in the worst way possible for him, and just barely being able to hold on as the flood of emotions threatened to overtake him."

Well, he did better with his crises than I have with mine. I sit up and turn my gaze towards her. "Ann?" I say, with much faltering. "Be honest with me. Do you think he's right? Do you think I killed her?"

There is a long pause before she gives an answer. In it the air is thick and unsettling. It feels as though it's choking me, as if my boss just called me into his office and the possibility of losing my job is hanging in the air. My shoulders stiffen in dread anticipation.

"No Maggie, I don't." The heaviness in the air lifts. I relax. "I think…" she continues, "Well I didn't know what to think at first. I mentioned it to Jim when we were searching for you two earlier today. He said something I can't help but agree with: 'He just needs someone to blame, and Maggie's the perfect candidate'." I feel my own emotions begin to swell within me. I feel like I might fall into tears, but for once it's not due to sadness, but joy. Ann scratches her head. "Problem is, will he ever give up the fight and admit he was mistaken? I dunno. Guys are stubborn like that." I suppress a laugh. "Well, maybe not guys in general, but the stupid shit society pushes on them, you know? Be a man, tough it out, no crying, that shit. It's stupid, it makes you a loose cannon, it- hey… you alright?" By this point I'm in tears, or I would be if I could still do that. I'd forgotten what having a friend felt like. Ann hesitates for a short bit. "Look, it's cold. If you want, well… maybe we should huddle together for warmth."

Without taking a moment to marvel at her newly discovered embarrassed face, or wonder why she decided to say that, or offer a response of my own, I fall back from sitting, towards her, and my head lands on her calves. "I'm fine," I say, beaming a large smile at her, "I'm totally fine. I just… well, what you said just now made me feel so much better. Thanks."

"You're… you're welcome?" She looks shocked. I'd almost say she was blushing. I let out a happy sigh, and close my eyes. "As cute of an offer as that was, 'huddling' might do more harm than help." I wiggle my fingers to illustrate my point.

"Right." She replies. She's snapped back to the indifferent Ann I'm used to. "Wait, cute?"

"Huh?"

"You said 'cute'."

"I did, didn't I…" I trail off. "Is that odd?"

"Coming from someone a lot younger than me, yeah – it is."

Another laugh I have to stifle. "I'm twenty-one. You're not that much older."

She shrinks her foot back away from me in surprise, and my head hits the floor with a soft clunk. "You're twenty-one? Bullshit!"

"Somehow I knew that would be the response if I told you that…" I rub my head with the back of my hand. "Look, don't tell that to the others. I've got my reasons for keeping who I was a secret, okay? I guess… I guess I just let something slip this time." I said with a shrug.

"But you look younger than Greg!" Ann retorts.

"Yeah, well the infection's done stranger things."

She puts a finger to her lips and thinks for a moment. "Can I try and guess your name?" she asks.

"Well sure, I can't stop you from trying."

"Ha ha. You know what I mean. Will you tell me if I'm right?"

Now it's my turn to think for a moment. I doubt she'd guess it. "Sure. You get one try a day, and…" I look at my watch. "it's going on midnight, so this one counts for tomorrow."

"Jennifer then. Is it Jennifer?" she replies, almost immediately.

I make a buzzing noise. "Nope. Good luck next time and thanks for playing."

She lies down, almost with a defeated look to her. I decide there's something deeper at work here, moving her actions, but I also decide that I don't really care to pursue them. Perhaps another time. I lie down myself, and find the sleepy haze comes much easier than it had earlier.


End file.
